Hi everyone!
I hope everyone is thriving in the springtime 
I am looking for your advice and ideas related to private property sales in community.
In Findhorn, we are trying to reform our policies for buying and selling homes/houses in the ecovillage. We have a mixed ownership situation and this is only about those homes that are actually private property. There were ideas when these were built, to have mechanisms that share value with the community when a house is sold, and to stop at least some of the marketisation and speculation that is a big problem for housing everywhere. For this reason, there were plans for a sales levy - meaning a percentage of each sale would go to the community. Sadly though, this has been ignored, and there is apparently no firm legal grounds to stand on. We’re still looking at reinstating it though, or in fact actually making it real for the first time.
So we are doing some research!
I know the legal situation is different in different countries, but we would love to hear how your community handles private property (if it has private property I know many don’t), and if you have in practice any mechanisms or systems for moderating the privatisation of value and the forces of market prices (which in Findhorn is making it extremely expensive to have a home).
Do you have anything like:
- a percentage that people pay when they sell?
- a legally binding agreement to sell at fixed prices not related to market value?
- some form of housing association that can regulate sales and prices?
- rules or practices about who can inherit a house when an owner dies, that favours the community?
- anything else in this area…?
Obviously the community could have set this up with more awareness back in the 90’s to avoid the issues of private property and marketisation of housing in a more thorough way - but that ship has sailed so for that part of our community we are 99% sure locked in to private ownership - meaning I don’t think we can handle a more radical solution like everyone donating their houses back to the community or agreeing to sell at half the market price etc.
It would be super helpful to hear what others are doing in this field