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Advice on Buying Land/Building a House
whatshouldicareabout
Member, Swaye's Wigwam Posts: 12,732 
I've had the idea for a little while now and only started browsing what's available in KingCo (suburbs). I know timber prices are climbing, so I wouldn't look to build right away, so maybe just grab something soon and then really plan things out.
Not sure if I'll do it or not, but I wanted to hear from anyone who has done it, thought about done it, or decided against it.
Not sure if I'll do it or not, but I wanted to hear from anyone who has done it, thought about done it, or decided against it.
Comments
First questions are how much land do you want? and how far in-out of town do you want to be?
Are you looking for an improved lot? Meaning: does it have utilities in place, or are you prepared to get them there? Sewer or septic?
From there, the most important thing is: is the lot buildable? Are there wetlands or critical slope to worry about? Will the governing municipality even let you build what it is you want?
There are almost an endless number of questions. Add nuances to each question thereto.
Good luck.
*I have not watched any of these, they were just at the top of the Ewetoobs.
So it turns out that the land that we were in contract with is plagued with never ending issues that were not disclosed to us... a big surprise was on the horizon for us that we were fortunate to avoid.
The story was that seller lives out of the area, had inherited the land from her deceased husband that had inherited the land from his family ~ and reportedly, no-one in the family had lived on the property for a generation or more, so the seller represents that they know virtually nothing about
the property except that it has been in the family for 75 years. (A giant lie)
On day two of the contract period, the next door neighbor to our daughter that lives in the area heard that we were buying the property across the street and sounded the alarm to our daughter about the dreaded Tiger Salamander Conservation zone issue for the area that the land is part of, and warns that it might have some effect regarding our ability to build on the property.
So we get calls to advise me of the neighbors concern and I think to myself, how big of a problem could that possibly be? No big deal right?
So I look up the issue and start to do research on the subject and it turns out that yes, the property [and all of the property in the surrounding area] is located in this designated conservation zone and that the area had only recently [2011] been reclassified into that category.
Turns out that virtually all of the structures that populated the area [very low density rural] had been permitted and constructed prior to the recharacterization, but if you just drove into the area and looked around you would never guess that there is any kind of limitation issue.
So, to get around the issue, apparently all you have to do is hire a geologist & botanist (?!) to come and survey the property and write a report that claims that your building project will have no effect on the habitat and migration patterns of the dreaded Tiger Salamander population that the various state and federal environmentalists have apparently fought to the death to defend. {and then hope that works, because if it doesn't you are in for possibly several years of environmental mitigation studies to decide what if anything you can build on the land]
So we look into the habitat and migration of the lizards in question, read the discussion of the required "vernal pools" [whatever that is] that they need to hatch and spawn, and read that they then migrate within1.3 miles to reside in burrows that ground squirrels and gophers dig and abandon.
Apparently, no-one ever sees these critters because they live underground, only come out at night periodically, and only migrate to the vernal pool in the late fall for a couple of week period before heading back to the burrow.
So we look around the property and are relieved to note that their are no apparent gopher holes, although we do know that our daughter's property is loaded with gopher holes, but hey, that doesn't matter in this situation. And fortunately, the property does not contain any "vernal pools" that we can see, nor do any of the surrounding lots in the area, and we feel like we would know because we have been visiting the property across the street to see our daughter regularly since we moved here 9 months ago.
What we didn't know and what was not disclosed to us, nor was it in the parcel disclosures, is that the middle 4-6 acres of the property floods regularly during the usual rainy season here, and that the depth of the pool that is formed in 1-2 feet deep and about 3 acres wide, forming a huge water feature which is present from the late October / November period all the way through to as late as July in a more "normal" year. We don’t know this because last fall and ever sense we have been in the area we have been in a drought and consequently there has been no standing water on the property this year.
That description turns out to be the classic definition of a "vernal pool", the ideal habitat for the destination of migrating lizards within the surrounding area. Too funny. It also brings into clarity the depth of the water table vs a perk test for the porperty which is quite obviously different than the 50 feet level that we had previously measured at our daughter’s nearby property during the purchase of that property a year ago
So we dodged a bullet.
Turns out that even though nothing regarding restrictions shows up on any of the parcel discussion and title reports, and if you call the zoning department regarding permits they simply advise you that you are free to build x number of structures per parcel with no limitations, the truth is the area is subject to an undisclosed fish and wildlife enforced wildlife use easement that you are required to clear via the mitigation study and and payola route [if you are successful], all of which is elliptical, expensive and time consuming ~ with no guaranteed outcome.
The capper is that the "mitigation" fee is assessed on a case by case basis and can as high as $200,000 per acre... funds raised are a primary source employed to create natural habitat preserves to conserve the threatened species.
Lovely.
Anyway, good times, we were fortunate to have been alerted and to be able to come to the correct conclusions prior to having to sue for material misrepresentation / failure to disclose at a later date.
The world is a wondrous place. Buyer beware, interview the neighbors, don’t just rely on title reports or sellers disclosures, do your homework, and good luck to you.
The second thing I'm interested in is relative value between building a new home and a new construction. I'm really in an exploratory phase, looking around at neighborhoods with land open to acreage properties to new constructions. I'm not in any rush to buy a new home or move, especially considering the inflated market in KingCo.
I'll check out these videos tonight.
To determine what you might pay for a plot of dirt, builders often use the rule of thirds. Until recently the theory held that what a builder would pay for improved dirt wold be one/third the cost of the finished product. 1/3 for dirt, 1/3 building/construction cost and the final-third for marketing, selling costs and profit.One builder in West Bellevue wouldn't pay more than 30% for a buildible lot.
Obviously an end-user can afford to pay more for dirt because they have a lot of room to play with given the freedom from the final 1/3rd.
Best advice is to focus on finding an already improved lot. Having to do the improving can be very tricky. There are plenty of Salamander stories to go around. 100.
Approved in 2015.
Since then has been in negotiations with "environmentalists"
6 years later and a 47 million dollar check and ground can be broken.
Imagine the holding costs so far
This isn't housing but still revealing
I did most of the work myself for two reasons:
1.) Insurance money wasn't much, and I wanted more than I could afford.
2.) Nobody even wanted to give me a bid for doing it "right." If they couldn't slap it together in a shitty manner that would fall apart, not interested or "fuck off" astronomical bid.
To that latter point, there is a right way and a wrong way to do everything. The right way is usually more time/labor consuming, and the wrong way is usually cheap and fast. Furthermore, building science has really evolved in the last couple of decades. There are new products and materials and techniques that have really changed the game. Most builders are still doing things the same way they did things in the '80s and '90s. I see it when I walk through these high end neighborhoods that are going up the hill from me. Shake my head at how much they're asking for homes that will rot.
I hired three subs. Foundation/slab, roof, and mud/tape/texture. Those were the three things in my build that were fucked up. There's that old saying "If you want something done right..."
I'm not sure I can offer much advise right now as to the value of buying vs. building. Lumber yards are stacked to the rafters with product, so my guess is it's the high price of existing real estate keeping the cost of lumber sky high. A lumber package for a new build or remodel doesn't have to be cheap, just cheaper than buying a place on the market. Builders and subs are basically naming their price, too (highly recommended plumber came by end of December and gave me a $5800 bid for work my shitty-plumber ass did in 8 hours and with less than $200 in pipe and fittings). Still, if I were to move, I'd do whatever I could to try building a place vs. buying so I could work with a builder to make sure it's done right.
@DawgsCanDance is spot on with buildable land horror stories. Mine was more annoying than deal-breaking: When I submitted the permit application for building the shop, the county came out to do a site inspection. They were fine with the shop's building site but PISSED about the little dirt bike track I had built in the back of the property seven years earlier. Apparently, they saw the little seasonal stormwater creek that used to run through the neighboring property in the wet season but now exists in some form most of the year due to all the development up the hill as a "wetland" even though no authority had ever designated it as such. "Illegal clearing of a wetland buffer zone" was subject to fines, and I'd have to mitigate before the county would proceed with the building permitting process. What followed was a yearlong battle culminating in being forced to hire a team of wetland biologists to file a report proving my "clearing" wasn't damaging shit and that the opposite corner of my property could be used for "buffer averaging," rendering it off-limits for future clearing or development. Cost a couple thousand dollars.
On the bright side, I'm barely outside of city limits, so that saved me a TON of money. Just a few hundred feet over, and my permit may have cost $30K instead of less than $3K. That's why I suggest you look into permitting fees and requirements for the area in which you're interested in building, as these can vary wildly.
Sit down with the https://www.ubuildit.com/ folks. You’ll learn a lot in the process.
Buying raw land to build on “someday” is usually a poor investment after carrying costs are considered.
Don’t start by getting a floor plan off the internet and pestering subcontractors for bids you’re gonna try and hold them to three years from now.
Vernal pools are quite commonly a wildlife/development problem in New England.
I remember when Forward Thrust (lol) was passed because Lake Washington was an open sewer. Lakes and rivers across this land were polluted and Lake Erie caught fire
Environmental science and clean air and water were GOOD for America. We? really did clean a lot of things up out there. And we still don't want a 200 house development built with Lake Washington as its sewer.
But when theses laws are used simply to stop development or make it cost prohibitive to build because of a seasonal mud puddle you lose a lot of support.
These are not intractable either or issues. But of course we? have pretty much made them so.
I like building code. I like zoning laws. I like energy code. It mostly saves people from themselves. It's human nature to be shortsighted, so most will save a penny now to spend hundreds over time or do something unsafe. I like that--for the most part--you can buy a house that was recently built, and at least it won't be a death trap.
BUT...
I've done a lot of complaining in the recent past about the hard line nature of some of these rules. Building a shopping mall? Pay $5K for soil infiltration and water table tests, pay another $5K for an engineered stormwater management system plan. Building a 501 square foot addition to your house in Whatcom County? Pay $5K for soil infiltration and water table tests, pay another $5K for an engineered stormwater management system plan. It's ludicrous.
The best was when the guy from the county rolled up in September for an impromptu visit. I happened to be outside nailing up siding. He said he was just dropping by as a courtesy to remind everyone with an open permit that the seasonal watershed land disturbance ban was going to begin in a few days. Because I'm an idiot and didn't know better, I responded with something like, "Oh, I'm all done disturbing land for the year. Other than maybe the driveway, I guess."
His eyes perk up, and he's like, "Your driveway?"
Me: "Yeah, I had to break it up to get plumbing and conduit under it, so I was thinking of replacing it."
County Dude: "But you don't have a permit for that."
Me: "I don't need a permit. I'm replacing in kind. It's just maintenance."
County dude: "You still have to permit that for stormwater feasibility."
Me: "Why? There will be zero impact on stormwater runoff. Besides, I'm not expanding by more than 500 square feet."
County dude: "Yes, the rules are different for replacement. Expanding your impervious surfaces by more than 500 square feet requires an engineered stormwater management plan. Replacing impervious surfaces larger than 1500 square feet is the same requirement.
Me (to myself): "Well fuck me for opening my mouth..."
Anyway, although there are examples above that would suggest it's hard no matter how deep your pockets, it seems at least where I'm at that the solution to zoning/feasibility requirements is money. It's a drop in the bucket to build an engineered retention pond when you're throwing up 50 McMansions (which must not even work or I wouldn't be swimming in water like I wasn't for the first several years after moving in), but that kind of thing can be a dealbreaker when it comes to building a single family home.
Geez...
What have you created here @DerekJohnson ?
At least numbers @1to392831weretaken got back on track.
I was at a planning department to pick up a permit for a bank job and was in line behind some poor soul who was trying to do it the right way on a minor home remodel. Turns out his back hallway in his existing home is too narrow now. That was only the start. I just rolled my eyes.