important: Please fill in the survey by 19/03/2023
Surveying you about your personal wishes for your apartments
Hi there dear @reeflings! One of the essential tasks we need to finalise to be ready to go and search for a site is getting a clear view of how many people want how many apartments, and what sizes those apartments will have. To get this clear view, we’ve created a survey that I would want to ask all of you to fill out by 19/03.
All of the information you need to fill out this survey is written in the survey itself. Ideally, you’d ask the rest of your household to cuddle up on the couch or at the dinner table, open the survey, and take about 15 minutes to fill out the survey together.
Almost undoubtedly, filling in this survey will raise questions for some of you. If you feel like you can’t fill out the full survey, please fill out as much as you can right now, and come back to the survey later (you can keep on editing your survey answers after you’ve sent the survey in). If you have any questions, please pose them in this thread and we’ll try to find an answer together.
Big thanks to @reef-building for helping out to create this survey
thank you to those who have already filled in the survey! A quick heads-up that following some feedback I got from Team Building I’ve lightly edited the survey:
to make it possible for reeflings to enter the exact gross sqm area they’d like for their apartment, if they know it.
to make it clear that even though the survey asks for your preference for a balcony or a terrace, that the Reef’s blueprint states that regardless of your preference every unit will have some kind of private outdoor space. The question in the survey is merely there for you to express your preference for what you’d like that outdoor space to look like, e.g. a balcony or a terrace.
If you have already filled in the survey and you’d like to amend your answers based on this update you can go back to your survey answers using the link you got in your email inbox when you filled in the survey, and you can edit your answers that way.
Hello @JolanWuyts, I have questions. The size calculator spreadsheet counts as “surface” the terrace and the technical room. And yet, as I understand it, these have surface unit prices different from those of the unit proper: a square meter of terrace is cheaper than a square meter of, say, living room. Does it make sense to sum everything into a number, then multiply it by 1.3 to obtain the gross surface? What’s the logic?
Also, are we sure every single unit has a 4 square meter technical room? With 20 units, that would make 80 square meters…
Hey Alberto, great questions! I can’t fully answer them, but here’s my best attempt:
for the spreadsheet: first off, the current spreadsheet is still an old one from a former cohousing project, the architects haven’t finalised an updated one yet that is more suited to the Reef. That said, the 4k per sqm price is a rough estimate that also has the price of the shared spaces calculated in it, so even though one sqm of terrace shouldn’t cost 4k the extra money can go to the cost of your share of the shared spaces. The precise price calculation is much more complex, but the spreadsheet tried to simply give an overview for people that want to get an estimate of the total sqm of their unit.
for the technical room: as I understand it this is a hard legal prerequisite that we can’t deviate from. I suspect that in reality this will actually be the case for most units: a unit with a heatpump will need an enclosed room with at least 2-4ish sqm for the heatpump installation. When we visited casa Nova there was a great example of what such a technical room with a heatpump installation would look like, and it was indeed 4sqm. I can imagine that exceptions can be made if we have some shared technical infrastructure (like the shared heating infra in Brutopia).
Our 2022 estimation from Stekke & Fraas lists prices of 3,672 per m2 with VAT at 21%; 3,336 per m2 with VAT at 6%. That includes the cellar, the balcony and the common spaces (evaluated at 10% in gross surface of the total of the private spaces). So, we should focus on the gross surface, evaluate it at 4K per square meter, and that will also take care of the commons.
The easiest for the balcony is to just leave it, unless you want a specially large one. In that case, it indeed makes sense to think about the price differential between balcony space and indoors space. In the estimation, the latter are 50% more expensive than the former.
Thanks for this survey, @JolanWuyts. While filling it out, a question came up regarding the question to indicate our preference for a balcony or a terrace. How do we define the difference between the two?
hah, good question! I’m not an architect, but in my mind, a terrace is either a space on the ground floor adjacent to your apartment or a rooftop space. A balcony is an outdoor space attached to the building and has no foundations under it, i.e. it’s floating. Because a balcony is attached to the side of the volume, I’d also say balconies are generally smaller than terraces.
I noticed that (at least in Brussels), “balconies” that are covered are called terraces, even if they are tiny and no matter what floor, but that is probably in line with your description of the “floating”.
I have a rather worrying question that is bugging me, and I need to put my brain at rest by asking a question that is either extremely silly, or utterly crucial!
In this estimation (and hence in the rounded up figure of 4K/gross m2), are the “finitions” taken into account? From Alberto’s comment and from looking at the file, I feel that maybe it isn’t.
But talking to people, I know we’re not the only ones considering that the finitions are indeed included in the 4K estimation, and I believe this is because it is the case in the size calculation spreadsheet that we’ve been using to evaluate how much space we need. But then also Jolan mentionned that this is an old spreadsheet from a former cohousing project… So does it actually applies to us??
Thanks for your answers!
Do we know what estimate they used for this? i.e. what price they took into account for the price of finitions per m2? Because that can vary wildly…
I do not, my recollection purely comes from past meetings where it has been said that the 4K/sqm has finitions factored in, but how that calculation was made I have no clue about
Yes, the 4000 euro estimation includes all possible costs (notary, VAT etc) and therefore also the finishings. This means that if you are good at DIY or if you are happy with cheap solutions, you can probably deduct 200-300 euro (per square meter) from this price.
We ended up using 4000 euro per square meter based on the assumption that we’ll go for a site that makes it possible to only pay 6% VAT and also on the assumption that we need to add some money to the architects 3500 euro estimate to take into account the future-proofing investments that are in the Blueprint 1.0.
Thanks to everyone who has filled in the survey already! @MariaAM@lenaftng and @Lara could you please fill in the form by tomorrow 21/03 at the latest? Thank you in advance <3
Thank you everyone for filling in your preferences using the google form, I really appreciate how everyone gave such clear input <3 Based on the form responses I’ve tabulated and aggregated all the data and have made a short report of this: voila Le Programme! I’m sharing this document with you all now and will send it to the architects after the weekend, to leave some time for discussion of the results and possible changes to peoples’ answers before I send the architects all the info. Please take a look at this document.
I won’t be able to make the plenary on Thursday or the weekend on 25-26, so if you have any questions or remarks please make them in this thread.
