The curmudgeon from Chicago wants to hear more about my new construction experience. Happy to oblige, happy to oblige. Our experience is the very reason consumers should use an agent to buy any home including new construction. So many things happened, and it definitely was a good preparation for my future real estate career.
Once the city granted the set-back variance for our house, we proceeded with purchase of the lot. We had to buy the lot outright; it could not be financed. Or, we could convince the builder to buy the lot and proceed with the building. Fortunately we had saved enough to buy the lot outright, but then we had to deed it to the builder!? I was confused and somewhat mistrustful. It finally made sense when the purchase contract specified that the lot would be considered as our downpayment on the home. It also made sense that a builder would not want to construct a dwelling on property that did not belong to him. His risk of our not getting financing or of his not being able to sell the house because the lot was ours would have been huge. Once it was explained and we appeared to be protected, I relaxed a bit. We should have had an agent!
The survey of the property revealed an encroachment and the forward progress was once again stalled. Encroachment? What on earth? Encroachment? An encroachment is the unauthorized use of someone else's property. We knew the neighbors were parking their cars on the lot prior to our purchase so was this the encroachment? No big deal. We'll get them to move the cars. The problem was not the cars nor did the solution seem to be that simple. The neighbor's fence was 2.5 feet over the property line and the mortgage company was requiring that it be moved. This is a great way to make friends with new neighbors! All I could think of was the problems we had had with the window breaking neighbor. Would our new neighbors be more understanding and agree to move the fence? We were amazingly fortunate that they agreed to move the fence if the lender would not accept a written acknowledgement that their fence was encroaching on our yard. Good fortune smiled on us again when the bank accepted the written statement. This written statement was supposed to be filed with the abstract, although I never checked to see if it was there.
Progress was being made. Only hundreds of hurdles to go before the house was done!
May 15, 2006
Thanks to the curmudgeon from Chicago for urging on the next installment in Bonnie's story.
I don't know whether the deeding to the builder is how we do it here....but I have never personally built a house. I can see the logic. I can see why you would be concerned.
Waiting raptly (I think that's the word) for the next installment.
Posted by: Maureen McCabe | January 23, 2007 at 11:31 PM