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04-30-2021, 12:26 PM | #89 |
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Personally, I would get it on your "to done" list ASAP.
I just reached out to a local SC insurance agent by email, asking for a recommendation for what type of insurance policy they can offer when a "vacant land" policy might not be applicable. I also asked what kind of coverage is used during the construction phase, be it self-funded or with a bank's construction loan. I'm not expecting an answer before next Wednesday. Anyone who has visited the south knows that they live a much slower lifestyle down there than we're used to here in the northeast, so I have to be patient.....
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04-30-2021, 02:33 PM | #90 | |
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Anyway, no time this weekend to ad the policy. Too busy building a structure on the property. LOL. Got some trees to cut down so I'm building a firewood seasoning shelter. |
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05-05-2021, 03:00 PM | #91 | |
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We are well into the "due diligence" part of the pre-closing stuff on our 5-acre lot. In case anyone else is considering buying land, here is a cut/paste from the purchase contract boilerplate that our real estate agent uses:
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The last piece of the utility puzzle that I didn't know was who the electric company is. Believe it or not, there are four different power companies operating in that zip code! Last night, I went through all four companies' online outage maps after some severe thunderstorms apparently rolled through and knocked out power. The power was out on the entire street on one company's outage site, so I figured that they were the one. Called and spoke with one of their line engineers this morning, and he actually had to pull their circuit maps to check because the different companies criss-cross in that area. Long story short, they can provide a 200A service and are fine with an underground handoff at the curb if we are trenching for other utilities. With any kind of luck, we'll be closing in four weeks or so.....
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05-05-2021, 09:50 PM | #92 | |
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05-05-2021, 10:16 PM | #93 | |
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05-06-2021, 06:41 AM | #94 |
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I did my homework *before* making the offer.....
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05-06-2021, 08:41 AM | #95 |
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Good on ya. I guess you have that luxury in a lot of markets. I forget that Seattle is a microcosm of stupid people making stupid decisions with their stupid amounts of money. Vacant buildable land goes fast around here. We lost our property to a developer who swooped in and made an offer without even seeing the property! We went to look at it for the first time on a Saturday, thought about it on Sunday, and started working on the offer on Monday. Before we could send the offer on Monday the developer made an offer and had it accepted. Our agent was smart enough to advise us to put in a back-up offer and give her the authority to move the deal forward on a moments notice without needing our input. When the developer dropped out a week later, our offer was immediately put into effect. We did a but of due diligence during that week but so much of what we needed to do required input from the city and quotes from builders that it took the full 45 days. The city requires all regulatory inquiries in writing, a $300 fee, then 4 to 5 weeks to respond.
Try getting a contractor, arborist, architect, and excavation company out to a property in the middle of a COVID lockdown to put a plan together for the city to review in "4 to 5 weeks" all in 45 days. |
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06-14-2021, 06:15 PM | #97 |
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Figured I'd update my thread here as it's been a few weeks. Some general lessons learned in the last month:
First off when "those" people say it will cost a lot more than you think and take a lot longer than you think to build a house, those people are wrong. Wrong in that even they underestimate on all levels! So when someone tells you it will cost waaaay more than you think, take whatever they say and I dunno, double that. It's an insane hemorrhaging of cash. We just dropped $6k on a full site survey with topographical contours and the location of every tree, utility, fence, easement, etc. mapped. We learned that the access and utility easement that allows us to access our property was sloppily drawn up and would have us needing to route the driveway onto the property in a spot where the property drops off a steep grade. The easement also runs through four 120' tall fir trees that we want to keep, if for no other reason than they are $4k to $5k a piece to take down. So we are now working with the survey company, our architect, a property lawyer, and the neighbors to re-draw the easement, shifting the last 50 feet of it 20 feet to the West. All in it'll be about $2k to $3k in "work" to re-draw the easement map, put a legal description on it, and get everyone to sign it and the city to record it. We also learned that every neighborhood has that one busy-body that calls the city every time you pick up a hammer. The city our lot is in is notorious for being very protective of trees. The permitting process to take a tree out is extensive. Dead trees, however, are fair game with no permit needed. Same goes for any tree under 6" diameter DBH; it can come out without a permit. For the past month we have been cleaning up the property. Took out some struggling, scraggly, little trees that didnt need a permit for removal. Had 5 dead trees that i documented, photographed, and sent to the city arborist for the thumbs up to remove. I got her approval so off we went. A buddy of mine is a retired arborist and he's got a old bucket truck with a 40' boom. Him and his kid came up to the property a couple weeks back and tackled the big trees that were beyond my comfort level to remove. Sure enough, about 1/2 way through the day the city arborist pulls up and start yelling at us to stop work. She's received a call from a "concerned neighbor" who heard chainsaws and probably saw the bucket truck. Despite our e-mail exchange where she said no permit was needed she was there to verify in person that each tree really was dead. She was actually pretty cool and since all my shit was in order it was no big deal. But sheesh, at least now we knwo we have a nosy neighbor who will likely be calling the city permit department at every step of this process! |
06-29-2021, 02:27 PM | #99 |
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We closed on our 5-acre wooded SC lot yesterday. Since we paid cash, the entire closing took 10 minutes and was entirely painless...wallet pain aside.
The current plan is to not start building for a few years, but I would like to cut a temporary driveway to the likely house location this year just to make moving around easy when the time comes.....
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06-29-2021, 02:49 PM | #100 | |
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06-29-2021, 08:00 PM | #101 | |
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We owned our lot for about 32-years before building, but it was right across the street from where we lived (and still own) so we used it (6-acres) as our private park all that time. Now we've been in the new house for over two-years and I can't imagine why we waited so long. Well, other than not having the money, or time, or money to build! |
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06-29-2021, 08:49 PM | #102 | |
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The previous owner of the land used it as a tree farm, and already put a big ol' culvert pipe in place for the driveway since it was needed to get all of the trucks and heavy equipment in/out for harvesting. They re-planted on the temporary roads they cut for harvesting, so I have a 50-foot culvert/driveway stub off of the road as my starting point.....
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06-29-2021, 09:09 PM | #103 | |
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We needed a functioning, approved, and tested well before we could apply for a building permit. The septic was just about the last thing that went in but the hydrologist had already submitted the septic plan for approval which around here requires a second backup field available for future use. |
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06-29-2021, 09:40 PM | #104 | |
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One of the major deciding factors in selecting the area where we purchased was that it actually has municipal water and gigabit fiber to the home. Both were built using rural utility incentives, and are things that I cannot even get at our current upstate NY house. The water company has a flat fee of $1500 for an install, which includes installing the water line to a house much farther off the road than ours will be.....
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06-29-2021, 10:22 PM | #105 |
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07-06-2021, 12:24 PM | #106 | |
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07-06-2021, 02:30 PM | #107 | ||
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https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08NVHXLZM/ It is a summary of various Facebook barndominium forum posts (I don't do Facebook!), with links to additional information on the web for financing and stuff. Good overview, explaining how construction loans work, etc. They make an argument for including the land purchase into the construction loan, to make the bank feel better about writing the loan. Not full of details, but rather an intro to the process. Since we are using a HELOC on our nearly-paid-off current house to self-fund the retirement project, I'm not overly concerned with construction loans and making banks happy. Living in a town in upstate NY that identifies itself as agricultural/rural, I just spent the last year on a town committee writing a new 10-year comprehensive plan. The first thing that I checked out in SC was their county comprehensive plans, to see what they identified as their problems in their SWOT analysis and if a barndominium would be excluded off the bat with no discussion. The county plan where we just bought (SC midlands) was just updated, and their biggest gripe is dilapidated mobile homes. Other problems are dilapidated stick-built houses in the town centers, and lack of reasonably-priced homes for lower income families. Maybe I can go into business selling barndominiums there? On the topic, a mobile home was made before the mid-1970's, when HUD came out with construction/materials regulations. Manufactured homes are the same type of thing, but made after the HUD regulations were adopted. A modular home is built off-site in pieces, delivered by truck, with final assembly at the home site. These distinctions are important, because a steel barndominium should be considered more like it is between modular and stick-built...and not a manufactured home. When you start reading zoning codes, these are each specific building types and not interchangeable terms. Since we are not in a hurry to build, I was thinking about putting up a small temporary cabin-type kit so we could have a place to stay for a getaway weekend and during the construction process. Hence, why I went digging into the zoning for various temporary structures in the previous paragraph. The strange thing for me coming from the northeast is that a lot of counties down there seem to have just chosen the international IBC or ICC building codes rather than create their own. As far as I can tell, all you need to do is buy a steel kit that's certified to those standards and you're apparently good to go. Guess I'll be finding out in a few years when we reach that step! Quote:
I have no fears of serving as my own general contractor (GC) for the project, but will have to face reality and hire someone down there to act as a GC. The distance is way too far to properly oversee a construction project, and my Rolodex is empty for locating reliable contractors down south.....
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07-07-2021, 10:39 AM | #108 | |
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07-08-2021, 10:42 AM | #109 |
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This thread is seriously light on pictures.
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07-08-2021, 11:59 AM | #110 |
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