Our experience with Resident Owned Communities – no BS

The “No BS about Resident Owned Communities” article that appears on this site brings to mind President George W. Bush’s comment while visiting Canada in 2004:

“I would like to thank all you Canadians for your warm welcome at the airport. Especially those of you who waved (pause) with all five fingers.”

I get it. We have a successful business model that is reshaping resident ownership and that invites reactions from competitors.

I stand by our record of performance to prove we have a lot of five-finger waves and cheers in the marketplace for ROC USA^® as we’ve closed:

• 13 resident-owned community (ROC) purchases in 2013;
• 12 in 2012; and,
• 11 in 2011.

In fact, we have closed a ROC transaction every 37 days on average since we launched in 2008.

We got there by being 100-percent focused on making resident ownership effective and efficient and successful. The marketplace is the true judge.

One of the keys to our success is that we don’t have to chase capital to finance resident purchases. We have already raised all the financing the resident corporation needs — including funds for deposits and due diligence — in a U.S. Department of Treasury-certified Community Development Financial Institution.

We have current liquidity to finance $40 million of resident purchases today. No one else in resident ownership services has raised capital in advance the way we have. We did it so we could create a different transaction experience for buyers and sellers.

We’re not simply brokers who get paid at closing and walk away — we equip homeowners with the tools and training they need to successfully manage their communities. The fact is that we care about each community’s long-term performance and we know every democratic association needs leadership development and cost-effective shared services to be competitive. ROC USA has a national leadership institute for ROC leaders, a national marketing program for ROCs, and an online and in-person training system to help ROCs and ROC leaders succeed.

At ROC USA, we use the limited equity co-op for simple reasons: It is the most effective and efficient, the fairest and the most affordable model for homeowners. We stand by our work of the last 30 years with more than 140 ROCs that we took from tenants to owners.

Not one of those communities has failed.

That 30-year track record demonstrates the competency and capacity of ROC members and leaders with whom we work.

Every one of these ROCs is real ownership where each homeowner can purchase one low-cost membership interest in the corporation that owns and controls the MHC. There are no outside parties with an ownership interest in the co-op or the MHC, only the homeowners can be member owners.

ROC USA is a nonprofit and thus must serve low- and moderate-income communities, but that doesn’t limit us to small communities. Our largest completed transaction was a two-MHC portfolio transaction worth $23 million for nearly 500 home-sites in 2012. Further, and not surprisingly, every MHC we’ve worked in has sufficient numbers of low- and moderate-income — that’s not an issue.

We don’t apologize for being well-funded or widely publicized. Getting things done attracts interest and attention. Every closed transaction gets a press release and we send postcards to announce purchases. Often we’ll quote the community owner or the broker. Here are two recent ones:

“The business model that ROC USA has developed is superb. It was a different transaction in that you usually have to jump through a litany of different hoops in regard to banks and bank regulations. But that simply wasn’t the case here. I would certainly do it again, and I will.”

Joel Erlitz, Broker,
First Commercial Property Corp.

“It’s no different than a sale to any third-party.”

Phil Johnson,
Seller in Minnesota

ROC USA does not practice public policy. In fact, we eliminated the part-time policy position at ROC USA in 201l.

We’re out earning our way in the marketplace — just like you.

That’s how we ROC ‘n’ roll. ##

Paul Bradley, President
ROC USA, LLC
pbradley@rocusa.org / 603-856-0709

(Editor's Note: this article comes as a response by the Paul Bradley to the Featured Article entitled No BS about Resident Owned Communities.

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