It all started with a napkin sketch. Sort of.
Technically the “napkin” was a yellow legal pad, but I had to crop the beer stain out of the picture so I feel like the comparison stands.
Michael and I had a lot of conversations about our goals and what we wanted out of a house. Michael is an engineer by trade. He knew he would want a large garage or a separate outbuilding where he could store heavy equipment to work on side projects. I knew I wanted a home office to work remotely and to live close to civilization, but not in a big city.
Keeping those two things in mind, we made a list of what our ideal property would look like:
- Build or buy debt-free
- To get experience building or renovating
- Relaxed or non-existent building codes (no homeowners associations!)
- Enough space to build an out building and no restrictions against it
- Close enough for both of us to drive to commute to work
- Access to high-speed internet
- Access to public water and sewage – we did not want to drill a well or put in a septic field due to unpredictable costs. We’re balling on a budget.
- Access to natural gas a bonus, but not required
Finding the Right Property
It makes more sense to buy than to build where we live. It’s a buyer’s market with many homes for sale often listed below market value. That being said, we could not find a home that satisfied all of our goals and was also within our budget. That’s when we started talking about building. It was a joke at first, but the more we discussed our wants/needs and our finances it changed from a “What if?” into a “How can we make it happen?”
There were not many empty lots that met our criteria and fell below $40K (our ideal budget). Many lots were classified as agricultural and were too large for our purposes. We do not have interested in starting a homestead or farm, so 1-3 acres was our target. Also, mowing sucks. Less mowing, more better.
We found a one acre lot that met all of our criteria, but there were two potential problems.
Problem #1 – There was a detention pond on the right hand side with a city easement including a pump station.
We requested a copy of the plat map from the city to understand where the easement is located, the type of easement, and what we are allowed to do with that land. It’s important to know whether the city can decide to put a permanent structure within five feet of your property line.
Problem #2 – The lot appeared to be part of a neighborhood that was across the street from the golf course.
Remember our goals – no homeowners associations! We had to request a copy of the neighborhood covenants and restrictions from the realtor to make sure we could live with the guidelines.
After talking it over, we ended up buying the lot. I was able to use the easement to negotiate the asking price down substantially to less than half of our initial budget. The covenants and restrictions for the neighborhood were expired and turned out to be a non-issue.
A Valiant Effort 