Purchasing the site: how much and when to pay

The Reef
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This post is meant to help Reeflings plan their finances in the run-up to the notarial deed that will grant us the full ownership of the JET-14 site. Please @reef-full read in full.

Background

  • In June 2024 a group of people in representation of The Reef signed an offre irrevocable to purchase the JET-14 site for one million EUR. The associated taxes and notary costs come an additional 132,000 EUR, which we will also pay (internal link).
  • Because of a loophole in the relevant Brussels legislation, a group of four households (buyers) is signing the offer with the seller. These four households, plus five others, have then signed an accord préalable where they agree that the extra five will contribute to financing the purchase of the site, in return for the four buyers agreeing to sell to these five their shares of the lot once it has been divided (more explanations – internal link).

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  • The idea was the accord préalable would be extended to include any new full member of the group that would join between the offer and the signature of the deed. At the time of writing this, the household constituted by @joannes and Ann has applied to become a new full member. Everything that follows is based on the group now including 10 (up from 9) households, eventually purchasing 11 units (up from 10).
  • The households who contribute to the purchase of the site are rewarded financially. We have not yet come to a final decision about how this will work precisely, but it most likely that any household that did not participate in the purchase of the site will have to pay an extra 4% on the casco price of their units. Exceptions can be made for lower-income households in the interest of inclusivity.
  • If a household involved in the purchase of the site decides to leave the project before the completion of the construction, it can do so according to the provision of the statutes. Essentially, it needs to find another household to take over its unit and finish it. That household’s contribution to the purchase of the site will be refunded in full (while the normal regime will be that an household exiting the project would only recover 80-90% of its investment, which is what Mark calls fermer la porte).

Timeline

  • 25 May: everyone pays their share of the first deposit to the notary.
  • 3 June: offer signed.
  • 10 September: everyone pays their share of the second deposit to the notary. Please let Team Finance know ASAP if you cannot make the deadline.
  • 15 September: compromis signed.
  • 15 October: everyone pays the outstanding balance of their share of the contribution to the purchase of the site, plus taxes and notary fees, to the Société Simple. Please let Team Finance know ASAP if you cannot make the deadline.
  • 15 December: deed signed.

Amounts

  • The amounts we contribute to financing the purchase of the site are an advance on the cost of the units. They do not represent a cost to you. You will recover the advance by paying less on the construction, because the principle is that each incoming household must pay as much per square meter as the extant households have already paid. This means that the “latecomer” households will finance more of the construction, whereas we “early movers” finance more of the site.
  • The amounts are in the spreadsheet you will find in this folder. There are two tabs: “May” reflects the accord préalable signed in May, “August” the current situation with one more household. You should obviously look at the latter.
  • These amounts are maximal. They can go down if one or more households join us in time for the deed, but they cannot go up.
  • Amounts owed by each household are based on the number of square meters each of us wants to purchase. Please note that, once we have put a price tag on each unit (this will require the avant-projet from the architects), we will switch to the price of units (rather then their surface) as the division key.
  • With the current 10 households, the total contribution to the purchase of the site, plus taxes, plus notary fees, is of 1,217.86 EUR per square meter (down from 1,405.34). The contribution to the 50,000 EUR deposit is of 53.79 EUR per square meter (down from 62.07).
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I need to take a loan to pay for my more-than-proportianate share of the site, so I would like to insist that the newly incoming members pay us all back, so that when the group is complete everybody has paid their fair share of the site.

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What will we do if we are not complete at the time when we sign the deed?
At this moment I am unable to pay more than my proportionate share of the land and I cannot take up a second loan yet because I will have to take up a bridging loan which is for a max duration of 2 years, so i can only do this at the beginning of the construction phase.

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@reef-full This is to let you know that Ann and I decided to retract our full membership, and propose to fall back to being associate member, with all that it entails. The reason is that there are too many uncertainties, largely on our side. Alberto and Manuel are aware of the details. We’re sorry for messing up your careful calculations and taxing your patience. In the meantime, the team Building and the team External can count on me, as before.

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New calculation coming up soon!

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Hello @mieke, your question has gone unanswered, but Team Finance is working on it.

@reef-finance, some additional questions on the topic:

  • Can you please include a proposal on who will pay for the capital costs for the money that we need to borrow?

  • Can you please look into how we are going to divide our savings over the purchase of the site (loan possible) and the bill from the architects (no loan possible). Knowing whether we can get a (partial) postponement is also something that fits in here.

  • On the cost of capital: can you please also look into the 2-4% mark-up fits with the question on how to pay for the cost of capital? And on the same topic, there will then also be the question of how much newly incoming members will be paying per square meter.

On a more practical front I would also like to ask whether you can let me know when you can present your proposal(s) on these topics. You’ll find the meeting schedule here: Increasing our meeting frequency - #2 by Sophie_B. Ideally we would do the questions and comments rounds at a plenary meeting, and then the decision at a FM working meeting.

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We will certainly not be complete. Team finance is investigating two possible solutions:

  1. Intra-group lending. Reeflings who do not need to borrow might be willing to lend some money to reeflings who do.
  2. Banking loan. Triodos has already confirmed they are willing to extend credit, though that will likely be more expensive than intra-group lending.

We are likely to need both. Stand by for our report back. Meanwhile, for all @reef-full participating in the accord préalable:

  • Please remember that we will also need to pay the first bill of the architects. The exact terms are still being negotiated by team building, but we need to plan for it. I have updated the spreadsheet with a column E that breaks this bill down among the nine contributiing households – please take a look.
  • Pay the second advance (column I) corresponding to your household into the bank account of the notary by September 10th.
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For convenience:

  • The notary’s bank account details are saved in the “Notary” folder in the Team Finance folder: Login – Nextcloud

  • The Excel sheet can be found one level lower in the “Accord préalable finance” folder: Login – Nextcloud

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I also put it in the spreadsheet itself.

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I don’t want to mess up with the file but one of the formula on sophie’s line looks weird. Don’t know if that has an influence, didn’t take time to get into the calculation formulas of the sheet…

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I don’t see it, please can you specify which cell seems faulty?

@alberto , our unit has increased with Le Programme 3, I have now updated the m² , therefore our contribution has also increased.
@els , in Le Programme you are down for 120m² total, whereas the contributions file mentions 92m², please could you correct if needed and also update your fonds propre (if applicable). Thank you!

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Noted.

I seem to remember that, when I made the first version of this, the data on Le Programme (2 at that time) were incomplete, and I had to ask a couple of people including Els.

Please let’s finalize this guys, we will be transferring the second batch of 25K in 2 weeks.

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I now updated the spreadsheet based on latest data fron Le Programme 3. There were quite some changes, so make sure you double check the amounts. Also please, like Richard asks, check and confirm your availability of fonds propres. cc @reef-full

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The size of my apartment still seems to be at 80m² - @alberto can you please change it to 94m² or can I do that (don’t want to mess with the table)? Also, I have already transferred my second (and incorrect) share of the advance this morning - was that too early and can I simply transfer the missing amount until 10/09?

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Done.

Yes, it was too early. These numbers are still moving, it seems. And about this, Sophie: can you also confirm your amount of fonds propres? Just edit the spreadsheet, there’s nothing to break.

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in fact i want to stick to 92m2 but see it was changed to 120m2 and guess if i change it back this will impact all the other people’s amount, so will leave it for now and this can be updated when we have to pay for the last part in december…

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Hi Els,

If ok with you, the solution that you are proposing would be the easiest, given that some people have already transferred the money.

Then when we calculate the contributions for the final payments we can correct your share and take into account the money that you paid too much. Would that work?

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yeah, off course

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@Lee
The remark i made on the full members signal group is not linked to your above question.
the remark i made is that the amount ‘fonds propres’ next to my name is not correct. I updated it recently , but in the contrat préalable it still mentions the old amount.
I talked to ugne in a private chat, and this was her proposition:

  • she doesn’t think the amount ‘fonds propres’ mentioned in the contract préalable is that important, so probably no need to update . She was still going to check with richard about that
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