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Approach
Imagine living next door to your friends, with shared car-free space where you can garden, eat outside, and frolic. When you have visitors, they can stay in the shared guest room, and when you have parties or get-togethers, you can use the common house. We allow homeowners to reimagine the future of their community, creating a pathway for folks without wealth to buy a home and plant roots in their neighborhood. Our projects are financed and sold as co-ops (the ownership structure) and draw design inspiration from Danish co-housing.
What is a Co-op?
When most people hear the word co-op they think of a college co-op with dirty dishes in the sink.
When we say co-op, we are referring to the ownership structure of our homes, which are cooperatives. A co-op, like a condo, is a way of owning a home in a multi-family community. Co-ops have been around for over a century in the U.S. but are most common in New York and Washington DC.
When you buy co-op, you buy what is called a resident share, which gives you ownership of your unit, as well as partial ownership of the entire community you co-own with your neighbors. As a co-op resident and member, you have a say in decisions that affect your community, but you don’t have to shoulder the burden of homeownership by yourself. At Frolic Community, we use cooperative ownership structures to help lower the barrier to entry to homeownership and build stronger neighborhoods.
What is Co-Housing?
The term co-housing was coined by the Danish, but the concept has been around for most of human history. Core to this idea, is the celebration of privacy as well as community. In most co-housing communities people have their own home, but share certain indoor and outdoor spaces such as a place to host gatherings, a guest room, a shared hot-tub etc. Working with thoughtful architects and designers, Frolic helps create communities that allow you to enjoy privacy and opt in to socializing when you want to. We believe that small, spontaneous moments - sharing morning coffee with a neighbor, two kids playing together without a planned playdate, eating with neighbors - make our lives richer. In our model, co-ops and co-housing complement each other to create attainable homeownership in beautiful, connected communities.
Homebuyer
What does it mean to buy a Frolic Community home
When you buy a Frolic Community home, you harness the power of cooperative ownership to build the life you want. Our model brings homeownership within reach, allowing you to invest in your future in more ways than one. Over time, you’ll be able to build financial equity as well as a strong sense of community with your neighbors. Choosing a Frolic home means recognizing that we can do more when we work together.
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What does Frolic offer you as a potential homebuyer?
Our model helps address the twin problems affecting housing today: first, traditional homeownership is very expensive and out of reach for many of us, and second, it can be isolating when we need to move far away from our people to afford the mortgage, or to meet our needs as we grow families and age. Frolic creates access to affordable homeownership within a lively and supportive community, with friendly neighbors and beautiful shared spaces that help you build the life you’ve dreamed of.
How do we bring homeownership within reach?
Through shared ownership, we lower the barrier to entry so that everyday people are able to build equity and enjoy the stability of owning a home. In our cooperative housing model, you purchase shares of your unit and the overall project. You’re able to buy in with relatively few shares, and buy more shares over time to grow your ownership. Our model is designed to be a bridge to homeownership for generational renters and first-time homeowners.
How does owning a Frolic home compare to renting or other homeownership?
As owner of a Frolic home, you'll pay a typical mortgage for your unit, plus a co-op fee that covers your share of the overall community costs, including all utilities, taxes, maintenance, and landscaping. Your costs are predictable and shared across the community, unlike with non-cooperative homeownership. And unlike with renting, if you decide to sell your unit, you get to recoup some of what you've paid. You can enjoy a higher quality of life and community, while still building equity over time.
homeowner
How we co-develop with homeowners
What does it mean to live in a Frolic co-op?
You’ll have your own private unit, along with beautiful common spaces to share, tailored to your community’s specific needs and desires. Most likely that would include a central courtyard, communal kitchen, dining room, garden, and guest suite. Working with thoughtful architects and designers, we help create communities that allow you to enjoy privacy and opt in to community when you want. Financially, you’ll have an individual mortgage for your own home, typically a conventional 30-year loan, and will also pay a monthly co-op fee, which contributes to overall project financing and also funds co-op reserves to provide long-term financial stability. You’ll build equity over time and are able to sell your home if desired.
How much influence do I have on my project's affordability and design?
We believe in putting the power of development in the hands of community. Our base financial model can accommodate a range of individual and community needs, and we are very intentional about partnering with homeowners in a way that supports those unique goals. Our goal is for homeowners to shape the projects themselves and with our help tailor the physical and financial design to accommodate their vision.
How does co-developing a Frolic benefit my community?
By partnering with us, you can help your neighborhood grow gracefully, supporting your current neighbors and creating new opportunities for affordable homeownership. Recently, cities have changed zoning to allow more density, which is a step forward but also threatens to displace legacy homeowners with rising property taxes, as we’ve unfortunately seen for decades. Co-developing with Frolic helps welcome the possibilities of increased density while supporting your existing community.
partner
How we collaborate
Development can be complex, and our work is made possible through deep and trusting collaborations with architects, developers, builders, and others. We see Frolic Community as a collective that includes the many organizations that have collaborated with us. We hope our partners will see themselves as part of Frolic, and use our tools in their own work. How can our work help grow yours?
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What do we mean by partners?
Our partners are people and organizations working in the fields of housing equity, real estate, and sustainable development, including architects, builders, nonprofits, lawyers, and more. We see development as a collaborative process, and we seek to build partnerships with a strong foundation of trust that will last through multiple projects.
What kinds of expertise are helpful?
We design communities, which means that we create financial and social structures that help people thrive. There are a few targeted areas where we stand to benefit from partnerships with outside organizations, including: community outreach, digital marketing, grant writing, and real estate agents.
What do we hope for in a partnership?
Every organization comes to the table with a unique set of dreams and challenges. We hope to form partnerships that allow for mutual gain, with each party’s skills and assets complementing the other. Building relationships at the speed of trust has allowed us to enjoy openness and creativity with our partners that is not often found in the typical development process.
