Historical (sorta) Documents

We're finding out that building your own house (or two) isn't as easy and doesn't progress as quickly as we'd hoped.  Surprise!  We've made some progress, but the process is bringing up many things we didn't anticipate.

Our builder, Tracy Marsh, has been great to work with.  We sat down with him on Sunday and finalized the floor plan for our house.  When I say "finalized", understand that nothing is ever final until the last nail is hammered, the last wall is painted, the last piece of flooring is laid, the last touch-ups are done and we get that "Certificate of Occupancy".  Everything is still on the table and subject to change, but for now this is what we're moving forward with (with a few minor changes - HA! - that aren't shown).

Downstairs

Upstairs

The Cabin floor plan

With finalized plans and a budget for both houses we were ready to talk to the bank.  Tracy recommended a bank with a good reputation for construction loans and also splitting the two houses into separate applications.  This should help move the Cabin along faster as it's just a renovation. Neta and I got our paperwork in order and submitted both applications.  The only item we had left on our list  was a plat of the property.

When we purchased the property our lawyer did a search to make sure there were no outstanding issues on the property, which can easily happen to records and such that date back to the 1800's.  Everything came back clean.  She also provided us a plat of the property which was the last one on record...from 1920, which was merely a correction to a plat from the 1890's...when the farm was 103 acres and I-16 hadn't come through and cut the property in half.  Suffice to say, it's a little outdated.

Interesting?  Yes!  Helpful for our loan documents?  Not so much.

Though the bank was impressed with our organized document packages we need to get the land re-surveyed.  In talking to a surveyor he mentioned parceling the land, which the bank also recommended.  We were skeptical at first, but found out that if we were to ever sell (not gonna happen) or default (better not happen), the house needs to be "comparable" to others houses for a realtor or bank to place a value on it.  With the exception of old houses (like our current one), few houses down here are on 48 acres or more of land.  Also, if we were to default, the bank can't come and take the whole farm, only the house and the few acres that it is parceled on.  It sort of protects both parties.  It's still one piece of property when the tax bill shows up.

Complicating all of this, or so we thought, was the fact that we'd received a "Conservation Use Exemption" on the property, which means, since we have timber that we can sell, we get taxed at a lower rate.  Now that we were breaking the property into parcels we were nervous that it would be breaking the covenant.  The Tax Assessor office allayed our fears.  Even though the house will be on its own parcel, it will be our primary residence and therefore part of the exemption.  The only part that will be removed from the exemption will be the parcel for the Cabin.  Whew!  Crisis Averted!

For now we're in a holding pattern until the property is surveyed.  Aside from the lack of speed of the process, we haven't run into any huge issues or deal-breakers.  Fingers crossed.

I hope to have a blog entry about the tractor coming up soon.  It's in draft form, but I'm waiting to get some good pictures.  No one likes a story if there aren't some interesting pictures to go with it, right?

Until next time...