Building Our House

Yep, it’s dead.

Apparently the owner and his wife both have cancer, so they’re in a hurry for the money, so a cash deal closing in a week is worth it to them, despite pain caused to innocent bystanders.  I don’t know if they need to pay bills or pay for their grand round-the-world cruise.  Whatever.

Jeff talked briefly to the owner but the owner was not very interested in talking, said it was a done deal and that it would “cost him money” to sell to us.  Cynically (or is cynicism actually being realistic, when applied to real estate?) this suggests: 1) he knows there would be problems found during inspection that would cost money and/or time, and/or 2) he knows it might not appraise for the offered amount, which would make the mortgage company anxious about lending to us for it.  Our agent did more research today and said for whatever reason prices right in that area have been lower than you might expect, and he wouldn’t be surprised if it appraised at $15k below asking price.  He might just be helping us with our sour grapes, but who knows.

Anyway, one more dream location scratched off the list - the third really promising option scuttled (original land that fell through twice, land that was lovely but 45 minutes away, now this house).  It’s quite draining.  Sure, we can stay here another year or two and the value of our house will probably continue to skyrocket - but in the meantime, what are we going to do about a studio for Jeff?

Once again it seems, a verbal agreement is not worth the paper it’s printed on.  Some investors showed up with an all-cash, no-inspection offer, so the seller is going with them.  Do people have no sense of decency in the face of money?  Does the seller actually know of some hidden problem that the inspection will turn up?

ARGH.

Our realtor is trying to see if the seller is willing to let Jeff plead our case via phone call - we’re not investors, we want to live there and raise our family, etc.  I doubt it will work, but you’ve gotta try.  Or cry.  Or possibly both.

Guess I need to get to work on the sour grapes list of things that weren’t so good about it after all.  Unfortunately I had a hard time coming up with anything earlier when looking at the house.  I may be stuck with “there must be a hellmouth in the crawl space that they won’t know about because there’s no inspection”.

Saturday morning Jeff stopped in a local real estate office and got us an agent - buyer’s agent for the buying, and listing agent assuming the buying goes forward.

Saturday afternoon we looked at the house again with the agent, and he helped us put together an offer - $5k below the listing price, promise of quick closing, not contingent on selling our current house (which our agent thinks will be no problem).  There were two other offers as well, but our agent said he thought we had a 90% chance of success, based on the tips and tidbits he could get out of the seller’s agent.

This afternoon they called to counteroffer at $2k below the listing price - we said yes, and have signed the updated papers.  The seller lives an hour plus away so probably won’t get to sign the papers until tomorrow.  Assuming he doesn’t have a wild change of heart, we should be under contract by dinnertime tomorrow.  Inspection, the next likely hurdle, is scheduled for Friday.  We’re waiting for a call back from a mortgage broker to get pre-approved (even though it’s Sunday).  Closing on or about 8/8!

We’ve also signed the papers to put our current house on the market, probably next weekend if the inspection on the new house goes well.  Our agent suggested a listing price that is almost 50% more than what I paid for the place four years ago!  He thinks at that price it will take a few weeks or a month to sell, which would work with our goal of having some time to get the windows replaced in the new place before moving in.  If we are ready to move and still haven’t sold, we can drop the price.  This agency works a lot in our small town (they handled my purchase of the house) so we’re assuming they know what they’re talking about!  Apparently the last few weeks have been very hot and he thinks we can take advantage of that.

Yikes!

Jeff and I have an affinity for the number 13.  We were engaged in room 13 of the inn where we were staying.  We were married on a Friday the 13th.

So this morning I posted about #12 so I could get it written before we went to see one more place at lunchtime today.  Which would make this place #13, though I didn’t really think much of it at the time.

This one seems promising.  It would be mostly on the “someplace to live and build a studio for a few years until we can build” plan.  Despite being on 1.4 acres, 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, den, dining room, living room, and a screened porch, it costs less than where we currently are - probably enough less that we can build a studio building and still have a slightly lower mortgage payment.

It only went onto the listing service this morning. The current owner grew up in it but hasn’t lived there for 30 years. His parents died about 7 years ago and it has sat unoccupied (except by their stuff) ever since. He’s just finally decided it’s time to sell it.

To be calm, let me put the cons first:

• Electrical wiring seems old - most outlets are 2 prong only (not grounded), the circuit breaker box doesn’t have very many circuits, and there’s no 220V dryer hookup. (Nice long set of drying lines out in the yard…)
• Windows would all need to be replaced - single pane, metal frames, crank out vertically.  The style is nice, the winter drafts probably less so.  The agent had replacement windows priced as part of preparing it for sale - a bit over $10k.
• Heat is radiators with a boiler - not sure how much that’s a con and how much it’s just “I have no experience with that”.
• A bit of mysterious staining around the A/C vents upstairs - the walls were just painted so it’s fresh.
• One bathroom upstairs, shared by the master & 2nd bedroom. Both the upstairs and downstairs bathrooms have the same pink & burgundy tile.
• Roof is aging and would need replacing soon, though it doesn’t appear to be leaking.
• Screened porch would need rescreening.
• Dishwasher is possibly older than I am; the stove definitely is, as are the cabinets.  It has a certain charm, but it’s definitely dated.
• Not a lot of curb appeal, to my eye.  Landscaping is rather plain, though there are some nice trees.

Pros: wood floors throughout, just refinished and in good shape (except where they just put linoleum in the kitchen and carpet on the stairs and upstairs hall, but apparently the floors underneath are OK, the owner just thought it would show better that way). Bedrooms are fairly big, especially the upstairs ones, with big closets.  The upstairs ones have 4×6′ dormer nooks with an arched opening, very nice.  Lots of windows - five in each of the upstairs bedrooms. (The only exception is the den, which is wood panelled and whose window and door lead out onto the screened porch.)

It was about 15 minutes to drive there from work, and there are a couple of ways I could go to minimize traffic impact.

The main part of the lot is about 100′ wide and 420′ deep (there’s a little piece across the street that is actually part of it as well - the street loops around a low stream/drainage area so there aren’t any neighbors directly across the street).  So there’s plenty of room in the back to build a studio.  About the back half is wooded - we couldn’t walk into it because we didn’t have the right shoes & clothes to tackle briars and poison ivy, though there weren’t a ton of either.  Also plenty of sunny yard close to the house that would have to quickly become vegetable and flower gardens, to reduce the mowing job!

Our feeling is that, if we want to act, we will need to do it quickly.  Which means figuring out things like how to sell our current house!  And means I need to quickly figure out what, if anything, my tummy pains are trying to tell me - act fast?  Run away?  Eat something less greasy for dinner?

Many angles, that is, were not exactly 90 degrees.  We saw this one last weekend but I am being lazy and distracted.  Just about 20 minutes away, nice looking neighborhood, 2 acres.  Sort of 70s modern, open and a funny angled roof. 

But the house is practically on the back line so any future development back there would seem very close.  And it was just not in very good shape - low spots in the floors, renovations that were not very elegant, very cheap cabinets in the kitchen, spots of past water damage on the ceilings.  There was a sort of crossbar over the bottom of the stairs which was not really level.  It has been unoccupied for a while as well it seemed, as it was very stuffy and a little bit moldy in some spots.

Nope.

Overall, we are still torn between our various options, given that our first preference (find perfect beautiful nearby affordable land on which to build) doesn’t seem to be working out in a timely fashion.  So… stay where we are for a few more years and do some sort of renovation or addition to provide studio space?  Find someplace that is cheap and easy to renovate into something like what we want (also not so easy)?  Find someplace that’s decent and has studio options and go there for a few years, but keep working on the land-building idea?

OK, I’m behind by a whole week!  I’ll try to catch up.

After the discouraging land conference call, Jeff went back to Plan B, existing house with renovation possibilities.  With the help of an agent who had another piece listed that we decided wasn’t worth seeing, he found two to go look at in person.

#10 is the Yellow Brick House, which has been owned by the same family since they built it in the early 50s. Smallish bedrooms, a new master addition also not huge, big yard with lots of grass to mow (but also some nice big trees), a rather ramshackle outbuilding that appears to have been built in at least four stages.  Seemed like a nice neighborhood too.  But it’s between two roads, and the bigger one seems like it may get a good bit of cut-through traffic at rush hour.  Overall just didn’t bowl us over.  And we wouldn’t have a ton of money left for renovations after we bought it.

#11 is on a cul-de-sac, 2 or 3 acres, with a small horse barn in the back yard.  It was built in the early 70s and still has the original appliances in the kitchen.  Because it has a full finished basement, it’s very big.  But it seems to have had some settling issues - cracks in the garage slab, uneven floors, lots of creaking as you walk - and it’s not as nice inside (cheapish carpet, no hardwood underneath).  It would need more work, and also would take up most of our budget just to buy it.

After visiting #11 the realtor took us to another place in the neighborhood, even though from the picture it probably wasn’t anything we wanted.  And it wasn’t great, really, except for the awesome screened porch.  It was built over a two car carport and was just huge.  A good idea to keep in mind for future building or remodeling.

We briefly thought that #6 (”Lovely if you don’t require plumbing”) might be back on the table, as Jeff found an engineer who seemed to know a lot about alternative septic systems and has contacts with the septic approval folks in our county, and this guy got the info on those lots and said it wouldn’t be that pricey to get septic in there.  But when Jeff called the developer who owned the lots, they’ve already been sold.  Ah well.

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.

OK, I’m not actually going to write about our vacation on the house blog.  But we did go on vacation, and the house/development-building planning took a bit of a break as well, while the architect did her research.

Apparently, to be a developer, you have to already be a developer. Word from the architect’s bank is that banks don’t lend money for that sort of thing - you have to have it already, or I guess find a private investor.

So, anybody lurking out there who wants to invest in an modern, eco-friendly small development?  Anyone?  Bueller?

I don’t think I’ve mentioned this idea of Jeff’s yet…  Form a partnership with the architect and a builder, buy a bigger piece of land (like maybe the 14+3 with the bridge requirement), build our house on part of it, and make a little development of similarly-designed, energy-efficient, eco-friendly, don’t-clearcut-the-trees houses out of the rest.

This kind of terrifies me, but on the other hand, it might work.  Jeff raised it with the architect via email yesterday and she didn’t shoot it down.  So he’ll be talking to her on the phone more today.

Of course, this probably means that the other offer the listing agent said might come by today will actually happen and it’ll be too late.  For this land, anyway.  But, since we have no clue how any of this would actually work, we might need some time to figure it out anyway.

We looked at one piece of land and drove past a couple of houses this weekend.  The houses were not worth numbering - a doublewide on 4 acres of bare lawn and kudzu-filled woods, a place on 2 acres that just didn’t speak to us next to a small industrial business (and has a pool, which we’d rather not have to maintain).

So #9 is the piece of land.  This one was actually mentioned earlier, it is very near the almost-bought land and was originally part of the same family land - the agent for this place called Mr. BA-NO, remember.  Anyway, we finally went out to look at it.  It is a very lovely piece of land, just as the first piece was, or perhaps even a little nicer.  Many attractive boulders.  Stream at the bottom.  3ish acres, though we couldn’t really figure out where the back corners were, it’s hard to judge the horizontal distance while standing on a slope.  So, shall we list the cons?

• The seller wants to try to sell it with the 14 acre piece that’s next to it, owned by another part of the family.  This is presumably because…
• It has no road access of its own, just access to a right-of-way that hasn’t been cleared.  (There is an existing dirt road down to the creek, but it goes through the middle of the not-for-sale-yet parcel, so of course they don’t want to make that the permanent access, better to run it along the edge for their purposes.)  And also because…
• It’s all on the other side of this stream, which is maybe ten feet across and eight feet deep.  Hence the requirement for a bridge.

The agent says we could try making an offer for just the 3 acres, maybe the owner will change his mind about waiting until somebody wants it all.  But how do right-of-ways work, would we have to clear and build it?  And then whoever buys the 14 just gets to take advantage of our investment?

The architect called a contractor they know who said, not having seen it, that he would expect to budget $15k for a culvert-type bridge.  A bridge-bridge would be more.

And it has some of the same issues as the other piece nearby - kinda narrow (180 feet wide, 750 feet deep) considering we don’t know what might be built around it in a few years.  High cost to put in a driveway up the hill (even if we don’t have to clear the whole right-of-way).  Some extra cost for the electric to get out there as well, I’d expect.  Well and septic.

Very attractive, though.  Sigh.