The second home my husband and I owned was custom built for us. We found a beautiful corner lot with a creek running through it in the small area in which we wanted to live. We were excited and ready to break ground long before the lot was ours or the plans had been finalized. It was a beautiful lot. It never dawned on us that it wasn't technically buildable! There was a reason that beautiful plot of land was left vacant in a completely developed residential section. In our case, the lot wasn't big enough to place a house at the proper set-back because of the creek in the backyard.
Set-back may be a new term to some. A set-back is the distance from the lot line at which a structure can be built. Cities vary in the set-back requirements and the requirements will also vary by type of structure, i.e., house vs. garage vs. shed vs. fence, etc. In our case we were dealing with the distance the front of the house had to be set back from the curb. I never realized that most houses on a block all line up at the same distance from the curb until our contractor said the lot could not hold our dream house!!!!! My first reaction was panic, but the contractor reassured us that this problem could be overcome with a variance. If we applied for a variance, the city planners would review our plans and specs and decide if they were willing to allow us to twist the home ever so slightly on the lot so we were within 5 feet of the set-back requirements. The "twist" gave the visual impression that we were in line because one corner of the house actually was at the set-back requirement and the other corner had no house to line up with! I hoped the city would grant the variance and I thought the fact that the lot had become a parking lot and general eyesore for the neighborhood would be in our favor. Nevertheles, it was not a guaranteed decision and it felt powerless to have someone else have to decide the fate of our dream.
We had made the purchase agreement for the lot contingent on it being buildable. We had had soil tests done, a survey (which revealed an encroachment), and now this variance. Money had been invested. It all seemed like a lot more work than I had imagined. Had I been in real estate at the time, I would not have been so naive. Thankfully, the city approved our variance, and we were given the okay to move forward to begin a new construction nightmare.
May 8, 2006
Hey Bonnie, it's me that grumpy old curmudgeon Gene Molloy. I just wanted to drop in and say that you had my rooting for a variance by your second paragraph. Are you going to tell us the rest of the story in future postings?
Posted by: Gene Molloy | January 14, 2007 at 12:17 AM