Building a house is no small thing. There are a lot of moving parts. Starting with the land. This part has been all new to me. First you buy the land - and then you do a survey. So we bought the land and then did a survey. Turned out, the plot is a fraction smaller than advertised - .24 acre, not .25 acre. And since no one lived there for — well, forever — the neighbors put a deer fence about 1/3 of the way into our property and built a shed that encroached around 4 feet. And who knew there was laws called Adverse Possession - which will be the topic of another post.
The property is at the corner of Cleveland and 52nd Streets. It was advertised with the address on 52nd Street. The property is 200 feet from roads and utilities, in pretty much all directions. So we needed to have a feasibility phase, in which we would have a Customer Assistance Meeting (CAM) with the City and get estimates from contractors for what it might take to bring the road and utilities to our property. We got one estimate because the other contractor was dealing with a family emergency. It came in much higher than the seller's agent had indicated it might cost. But both were based on certain assumptions.
During the CAM with the City, they advised us that they would prefer that we develop Cleveland Street, not 52nd Street. But we now learn (after we own the property) that a gravity sewer line can't really go up Cleveland to 53rd Street, it's too tight. So the road and water will come down Cleveland, the sewer line will come up 52nd Street and, it turns out, that the closest electrical transformer is close to 51st and Cleveland. So three directions. So the truth is, at this juncture, we don't really know what it's going to cost.
Comments