Appartment choosing process

The Reef
1

Hi @reeflings,

This is a new post on behalf of team building.

Following our last discussion with the architects, we got more information on the next steps that they envision. You can find all the details in els’ post.
With this new post, we would like to increase clarity on a specific aspect, namely the process for choosing
your apartment, making sure everybody is on the same page and having a discussion about it if needed.

It is already outlined in Els’ post, but for the sake of clarity, here are the steps for this specific process with some extra details :

  1. We send them our individual programs with a few broad wishes (“I want to be in a quiet space”, “I want as much sun as possible”, “my budget is very tight”, “I want to leave within the site and not on the streets”, “I want to be in this building”…).
  2. They try and include this in the making of their plans. There will be a lot of architectural constraints (for example, the “murs porteurs”/bearing walls having to be stacked properly onto one another, they can’t put only 2-bedrooms apartments on a single floor, …), so they won’t be able to make all wishes come true in terms of size and situation in the building.
    There will be “réunions de travail” with them during this phase, although we are not exactly sure at this point what points we will be able to feedback on.
  3. They come up with a final plan, including a final division of the buildings and a final budget, based on actual quotes and feedback from their technical experts
  4. Mid-november (tentative date), we collaborate on the criteria and weighing process. The objective is to rate each apartment based on 10 criteria (sun exposure, noise, view, access to the garden,…), with each criteria having a specific weigh. They will make a proposition but there will be a back and forth so that we can adjust the weighing, so there will be some flexibility.
  5. We now know the final price of each apartment. There will be no names attributed to a specific apartment.
  6. Early december, the first wave of Reeflings (the “fondateurs” as they called them) chooses their apartments, by order of full membership. At this point hopefully there is something close to our initial wishes that we can take, but it won’t ever be a perfect match.
  7. Later Reeflings choose their apartments, within what’s left in the apartment pool the archi have designed. Some adaptations can still be made, if feasible (for instance turning 2 1-bedroom apartment into one 2-bedrooms apartments), but basically they will have to choose from whatever is left.

Some notes about this:

  • The archi will start working when we send them our program
  • As mentionned by Els already, with the criteria and weighing process, each appartment will have a different price per m2.
  • When we send out Le Programme, it won’t be possible to say “my first choice would be”, “my second choice would be”, etc… but only give wider wishes (light, price…)
  • There is a lot of variability within the whole process (e.g. what the architects can do in term of apartment placing, the sizes they are able to propose, the fact that we will deviate from the unit pricing strategy of -10%//0%/+10% and the price per m2 won’t stick to the intial projecions we established our personal budget on).
  • The financial aspects will only be taken into account at the very end (they should be able to easily attribute appartments with the lowest budget though). We asked them if we could communicate our maximum budget, but they said that wouldn’t be helpful to them, especially as everybody will have a different cost for finition (note for @reef-building : we might want to check again whether that answer stands if we send them casco price).

This topic will have a slot at the plenary tomorrow, and we would like to gather reactions and concerns (if any) on this and see if we are happy with the plan as it is, or if we need to clarify some things with the architects during our next “réunion de travail”. Feel free to start engaging with this here.

7 Likes
2

As I was the one to raise this issue, I’ll already share my personal feeling regarding the fact that there won’t be an estimation of m2 price distrbution before the very end.
Basicaly I don’t feel fully comfortable with this. Because the site is much more complex than a more classic “one rectangle block”, it is harder to foresee how the price fork will apply (for example, they told us obelix might be more expensive because it gets more light, but less expensive because it has more noise… and inversely for the 2 others ). So if we communicate “I want to have an apartment in the average price fork”, I don’t see clearly how they will try and match that as I’m not sure it’s possible to have a clear picture of where “average price” will be for sure without doing the weighing exercise. And so I’m worried that they will create an apartment with our wishes in mind, but that it won’t be financially accessible for us in the end. And that might mean that we have to go for a apartment in the lower-end of the price range, which we are not sure we would be comfortable with. As I said, there will be variability, so we will need to accept we are not getting our perfect apartment. But I would like to know that we are having the best chances of being close to that…
Also in terms of completing the group, we might want to know roughly where the apartments that are left err before commiting to accepting more full members (I get the feeling that we need to be sure the last group will match the apartment prices that will be left at the end)

I’m not sure I’m thinking clearly about the process though, so I’ll be happy to discuss the above and have feedback, and maybe talking about it will at least help reassuring my doubts…

7 Likes
3

Hello @Sarah , I share your concerns. I haven’t read Edgeryders during the past 2 weeks and I was not present at the last plenary, so I was wondering if there have been any further discussions about this?

1 Like
4

Team building is going to discuss this with the architects… will let you know how that goes :slight_smile:

1 Like
5

Hi @Sarah
I am coming back to this post following Els’ inventory of available appartements.
Overall, I don’t have a problem with the hierarchy of choosing.
One concern as I see the discussion on prices advancing is : what happens if none of the available appartements, once the other members before us have chosen, can fit in our budget ? (If there is no guarantee of that, can is this risk for members coming laters can be taken into account?).

1 Like
6

HI @reeflings

I think there has been mentions here and there about the feedback from the last meeting with the architects about this, but I said I would make a post here to make sure it is clear for everybody.

So basically the architects are saying they do not take into account our personal program when creating the appartments. So they don’t look at each individual program and think “based on what he/she/they are indicating, we should foresee a 80m2 2 bedroom here if we can”, and work their way down our wishes that way. Rather they make their plans based on architectural constraints, and if there is a choice, then they look at the programs to see if one choice should be favoured over another (“there are a few people with a 2 bedrooms who want an apartment on obelix, let’s put a 2 bedroom here rather than 2 1-bedroom appartment”, or something like that).
For that reason, they don’t want to have info on our budget for our units, because there won’t be a tailor made apartment for each of us.
They say that this has always worked out in their previous projects.

@RichardB , @els , please come in if you have extra info or different understanding.

5 Likes