Residential Homebuyers

Memberships are the cornerstones of building regenerative communities.  

However, memberships can be structured in many different ways.  Here is what membership entails (and does not require) in Nature Towns.  

For Nature Towns, membership is a journey of give and take.  

What you get is a progression of answers to the following questions:

• Is this financially viable (Learn about the Nature Towns Integrated Land-Use Model, and the Nature Towns Regenerative Economics Model)

• Is this a viable pathway for creating the first Nature Towns (Regenerative Finance).

• Are there enough serious people wanting to do this? (A critical mass of Memberships)

• How do we get land control?  (DCIF - Diversified Community Investment Fund) 

• How do we get together enough money to buy the land?  (Regenerative Agriculture Development Districts)

• How do we finance the development?  Conservation Easements

Each step along the way builds your homeowners equity, and must be demonstrably positive financial step for the money you invest.  The steps begin with Membership ($ 00’s), then DCIF ($ 000’s), then RADD ($ 0,000s in Bonds).

What you get:

• With Memberships, you get a timestamp when you make your online purchase.  That is an incredible benefit, because we use those timestamps to give our first members/supporters the first right of refusal (in order of the first / oldest timestamps) on lots in their category (Single Family, Single Family Plus, Live-Work-Retail).  Our belief is that with a simple, but substantial credit card charge, you can believe that the other members are serious about proceeding with Nature Towns.

• The DCIF brings together enough money to pay for the option on a target piece of land.  The goal is to focus on high quality land that is sure to attract the greatest number of memberships, and buy-in to the DCIF.  Only members will learn about the location of the target land, and only members will inform the regions where we choose to select the land.  The DCIF also provides funding for the legal team to put together the mechanism for funding the land purchase bonds and first stage development costs.

• Once the land option is secured, we will need bonds to buy the land.  Fortunately, the State of Texas has enabled a perfect tool called the Agricultural Development Districts.  The ADD’s enable the members* to band together and use their property’s to guarantee green municipal bonds which can be used to purchase the land.

• Once the land has been purchased, we can harvest the surplus commercial value of the land as a tax credit, by applying for a Federal Conservation Easement.  This generates millions of dollars that we can use to finance the payment of the green bonds (this means that you don’t have to pay additional property taxes for bond interest rates), and the development services needed to start building the housing lots. Once we have these lots, we will begin identifying which lots you will choose to live on, using your membership timestamp in order of purchase date/time.  So, you can see that getting your membership as soon as possible is critical to getting your highest quality experience in Nature Towns.

But there’s more!

We are extending your timestamps lifetime!

We are now stating that your membership is timeless.  It is however limited to just one housing lot.  By timeless, we mean that if you choose to migrate to another Nature Town, we will re-activate your timestamp (it is inactive so long as you are living in a Nature Towns’ lot), meaning that your date/time stamp gives you the queue position for choosing a lot in the next Nature Towns.  This is like a ‘built-in’ mechanism to trigger upgrades.  Click here for more details on Nature Towns Membership details.

With your membership, you will get loads more details in the private members section about DCIF, RADDs, Conservation Easement Financing, and MUDs.  But what we haven’t yet shared with you is how your membership can make you money before moving in.  We call this Markets.  In this section, you will find opportunities to sell possessions that you no longer need (Marketplace), and use our Private Members Club (Assocation) to gain access to wholesale distributors at lower prices for things like raw pet foods, bulk local produce and proteins (we break down the bulk volumes into more manageable sizes for your household), and lower cost gardening supplies (we aggregate plant start purchases of our members to meet the wholesale producer minimum purchase requirements) as well as soil amendments.

Marketplace

Marketplace is designed to help members address some current challenges and future challenges.  One of the future challenges is how to downsize your possessions.  While there are easy categories to sort out (donations, transfers to family members, there are somethings that need to be sold, or are harder to place).  Marketplace is a tool for members to list their items at the preferred time before moving, on a public website like Craigslist.  Let’s face it, if anyone is going to find value in the things you own, it most likely will be people with similar values to you, which are our members, and even broader, our subscribers.  We will be promoting this service on our Social Media channels, and plan on listing this items on EBay as well.

Our Private Members Club is a simple way to come together and take advantage of wholesale pricing when it is to your advantage.  For food, we are a drop point for high-qaulity bulk food distributors (organic and conventional), as well as client at a premium whole sale food distributor focused on local and regional top quality produce for restaurants etc.  We also have access to a Restaurant distribution channel for conventional products that can be more affordable, especially when purchased in bulk.  For many of these products, they might be 2-6 big bags inside a box, and we are just breaking up the box for several clients.  Purchasing is always done via our online store in advance.  We plan to provide this service 1 morning per week once we our membership sales growing at a good rate (staffing considerations drive this activity).

We do the same strategy for Raw Pet Foods, in which we work as a drop point for the Raw Pet Food Association in Austin, as well as access low-cost proteins such as cut chickens, beef bones etc. from Restaurant supply companies.

For gardening supplies, we aggregate your purchases to qualify for wholesale vendors minimum purchase requirements.  The plants are later delivered (weekly) to our location for same day pickup by you.

Because these functions are part of your membership and a private members club (association) legislation, we do not have to have a City of Austin approved food facility.  This same legislation supports private clubs selling alcohol without inspected facilities by the state or municipality, and has been tested thousands of times, and successfully defended, in the courts.