The Conference Call
On Saturday, we got a call from the agent listing the 14+3 acres, of which #9 Bring Your Own Bridge was a part. She was putting together a conference call with the other folks who had expressed an interest in having a part of that land, and with a developer.
So here’s the grand plan. We get permission to hook up to the sewer and water lines - a mile away - and put in the intervening pipe ourselves. Put in the road and the bridge. The developer divides up the land and sells lots to us, at cost (buying it plus the utilities and access) plus maybe $5k per lot, which they assure is is much less than they will charge other folks who are not in on the ground floor.
Right now it’s zoned Country Residential, but it sounded like to get the sewer & water it would probably have to change to Low or Medium Density Residential, and the minimum lot size might be a half acre. We would also be annexed by one of the two cities in that part of the county.
We went around and introduced ourselves - always fun on a 7 or 8 way conference call. The other folks mostly want an acre or less, for houses of 2000-5000 feet. The listing agent, instead of taking a commission, gets an acre, on which she would like to put 7000 square feet of Mediterranean villa, “well screened with trees of course”. Somebody brought up the idea of putting a gate on the entrance road, which was met with much approval.
The agent asked us to write up a list of our questions and concerns and get them to her by the time she’s back from a trip and then a conference in about 20 days. And what sort of restrictions we should have to maintain our property values, like minimum square footage.
Overall, it seems to be a question of “can we back out before they kick us out by setting rules that rule us out”. It wasn’t a shock, but it was still depressing.
Jeff is back to searching the listings.