Quote:
Originally Posted by dreamingat30fps
I will say a lot sounds like it has to do with the city and a bunch of bureaucratic bs....
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100%. A lot of this is self-inflicted by the town we chose to buy land in. We could have picked a different town and had a house by now. A couple massive lessons learned too late for us:
1) Find a builder who has an ACTIVE project in the municipality you want to build in. Not a builder who has built a ton of homes NEAR your town, and not a builder who built in your town X years ago. Find someone building right now and ask (pay them) to sit down with you and your architect and help you through the feasibility period, before you buy. Every town has idiosyncrasies that need to be thoroughly understood. Our builder, architect, civil engineer, geo tech engineer, etc. have all done dozens of projects NEAR our property but technically in different towns. All are flummoxed by how badly they underestimated the pain we would be subjected to. If we were building in Seattle, our house would be done because Seattle is pro-growth and actively tries to cut out the red tape because they need density. If we were building a few towns over in Bothell we'd be in the middle of a mandatory 12-month storm water management test. If we were building a few towns over in the other direction in Shoreline we'd be hung up on civil engineering permits because their on staff civil engineering reviewer is notoriously under-qualified, overzealous, and slow. In the town we picked, it's all about the trees. One of the reasons we picked the locale. We have 95% canopy coverage on our lot and will still have 75% when the project is done. We want to feel like we are living in the forest but be 5 minutes from town.
2) Some towns dont want development. They dont care about your tax dollars. They are happy with the town as is and really dont want you developing. They will actively discourage it through red tape and other BS. Ultimately they cant prevent you, but they can make it so painful that you walk away. Win for them.