Tortoise Hollow is the name I have given to a roughly seven and a half acre parcel of land in Central Florida where my husband and I are making our new home. The land is mostly wetland and the wetlands will be dedicated as a conservation easement forever. We are building a house and this site is dedicated to documenting the long complicated process of building a house immersed in nature. Here you will see what it takes to get approval from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the St. John’s River Water Management District to build a single family home.Well, we finally got our revised septic permit after months of waiting. Now we go forth to attempt once again to get a building permit. We still don’t have the money we need to build the house once we get it, but we could at least start and perhaps we would get some momentum to figure out a way to keep going. One can only hope. Merry Christmas.
So, a lot of time has passed since I last posted, but that is because essentially nothing has been happening. We got our drawings revised and our builder put in for the changed permits, but things are moving at a snails pace. We’re kind of used to it at this point.
In any case, we should have the new septic permit in a matter of days (I know, famous last words) and then it will only be a matter of getting the revised building permit through, but the building department is aware that it is coming, so hopefully they will actually do something with it.
The bad part is, we no longer have enough money in our 401Ks to be able to borrow what we need, so we are seeking other options, ones that do not involve crooked appraisers or underwriters who are afraid of their shadows. Hmmmm. This could be interesting.
We met with our builder yesterday evening, and the meeting went well. He thinks our plan for the alternative house is a good one and is going to investigate with the county to see if there is anything that would stop us from using a cistern for our potable water. As far as I can tell through my research, there are some houses and other structures with cisterns in this county, but none that use rainwater exclusively as their potable water source. Still, it is a common practice in other parts of the world. In the Virgin Islands, it is pretty much the only way to get water to a residence. Even in this county cisterns were common in the 1800s to the mid 1900s.
In the course of my research I found that there is agency after agency advocating water conservation and alternative water sources, some of them are the same ones we worked with to get our wetland permits, such as the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and the St. Johns River Water Management District. Then there is the EPA, the federal government, and even a water resources conservation team within our county pushing for water conservation. It would seem that it should be easy to gain approval for our proposed cistern water system, but then again, nothing has been easy for us. I am going to start making some calls tomorrow to find out if there is any precedent in this matter.
I have been drawing all kinds of different possibilities for a layout of the workshop/house. I think Andy and I have figured out a good layout that we can live with. Of course, we still have to meet with our builder to see what our options are, but at least we sort of have a plan.
We are continuing to explore the plan for building and living in the expanded workshop. Andy and I have even come up with a workable floor plan, and we have researched cisterns as well. It seems that the best option for us would be to get two smaller cisterns so that they can be taken offline one at a time when they need cleaning or maintenance. The cost for the cistern system is much, much lower than the anticipated costs for the water main extension. Like $20,000 lower. The design of the place would be similar to this, but it would have siding rather than shingles on it, a metal roof (better for catching rain water to fill the cistern) and there would be some other slight variations:
It is a simple plan and uses the trusses we already had designed for the original workshop, so that should save money. We are excited about the possibilities and just need to meet with our builder to see about the feasibility of this idea. Then we should be able to get started in short order.
So, we’ve been sitting around brainstorming, because it seems to be the thing to do. So far, what we are thinking is that we will forget about getting a mortgage, and instead each of us will take out a 401K loan for $50,000. That would give us $100,000 to work with, plus we have about $11,000 left from what we saved for the project. With that money, we would do most of the site work for both the house and the workshop, then build a slightly larger than originally planned, two-story workshop that would be our temporary home. When the market changes later on, or gradually over time we could work on building the main house, then the workshop would be converted to an actual workshop with an apartment on the second floor. Even still, the money might be pretty tight in getting that accomplished. Our builder is on board with the idea and is going to meet with us this week to discuss the options. We are going to have to be vigilant in saving money on the project wherever we can.
To save money, we would do things such as using a cistern to collect rainwater from the roof, like they do in the islands. When I lived in St. Thomas, I had a cistern for water and it is a very simple system- a tank, a pump to pump it into the house, and of course, a metal roof with a gutter angled to channel the water into the tank. This setup would save a lot of money, because we are facing somewhere around $25,000 for a water main extension, water meter, hook-up fees, etc.
We had all kinds of problems with the stupid appraisal, and we finally took our last option which was to have yet another appraisal done, this time at a $1000 expense. Since we had no other choice, we went for it and then were strung along for a couple of weeks while the new appraisal was completed.
Well, you guessed it, this one was even lower than the other one, by a large margin. The only way we can get a mortgage now is if we bring $63,000 to closing. I asked the mortgage consultant if we were supposed to just crap it out because she knows we do not have $63,000 sitting around; it is all tied up in the project already.
Honestly I don’t know what is going to happen now. I am sitting here right now writing this very calmly in an effort to keep from completely freaking out and going into hysterics. I want to punch the walls and scream obscenities at the top of my lungs, but it wouldn’t do any good anyway. Andy doesn’t even know the bad news yet- he is out at school taking care of some administrative junk.
I haven’t given up every last hope just yet, my mind is racing with ideas of alternative homes we could build on the super cheap or other ways to solve some of the more expensive aspects of building the house- such as using a cistern for our water supply instead of putting in the costly water main extension we have planned, or building the house like a treehouse to avoid having to bring in such massive amounts of fill dirt to build up the house pad. I just don’t know how difficult it would be to make these changes to the plans, or if a lender would even consider lending to us if we do something unconventional like that. But at this point, we have to consider every possible option we can come up with.
Our mortgage consultant is not quite all there. She just doesn’t understand some of the most basic concepts of construction mortgages, and this seems odd, because this has been her profession for the past five years. Our builder, Bob, talked to her today to try to get her to understand, and he called us right afterward to tell us what a dingbat she is. I think it is time for us to go above her to her supervisor, because there is no amount of us hammering her with the facts that will make her understand.
We still can’t fathom that the appraisers valued our land so very low. Even more apalling is the fact that they refuse to budge on the value, insisting that even though it is all permitted and ready to build on that it is worth $50,000 less than it appraised for when we purchased it, not knowing for sure if it was even buildable. But beyond that, we are baffled at the fact that the credit union is not applying any of the costs we have already paid on the development of the property to the down payment we must come up with. I sent this email to the mortgage consultant tonight; we’ll see what she has to say about it.
We had one more question regarding our equity toward the down payment of our loan. From the very first time I talked to you, I asked specifically if we could apply the construction costs we had already paid towards our down payment. At the time, you said that we could. We don’t understand why these prepaid costs no longer are able to be applied to our down payment, as they were necessary costs to build a house on the property. We have submitted to you a worksheet showing the construction costs that we have already paid towards this project. These costs include soft costs such as our house plans, truss design, septic permit, a/c layout design, impact fees, and surveys, plus some hard costs for materials. We have in our possession all of the bathroom faucets and door hardware we will need, plus many light fixtures, some appliances, and so on. We purchased these items in anticipation of the project and they will be used for the construction of our home if we can ever get the mortgage. Trust me, we’ve been tripping over all of this stuff for months.
All of the amounts we have already paid can be proven with receipts or canceled checks, which we will gladly provide. It is customary in the industry to apply these prepaid items to the down payment. This would be completely independent of the appraisal and has nothing to do with the appraised value, but each time that Andy has mentioned it to you, you stated that we have to go by the appraisal. We were not disputing that, but these prepaid soft costs would be calculated separately. The amount of costs towards this project that we have prepaid comes to $37,876.21. That should be more than enough to cover what is needed for our down payment, regardless of whether the original appraiser chooses to change the value of the land on our appraisal. Please consider the attached worksheet showing these prepaid items and please forward this information on to the underwriter. We will supply proof of payment for these items upon request.
Thank you,
Jen and Andy
From www.allexperts.com, “Soft costs: Permit fees, engineering fees, architectural fees and other costs associated with building the home but not directly a part of the actual construction costs. Many times the borrower has already paid some of these costs. To consider these paid items as “equity,” the borrower must document the cost with a bill and a canceled check or a paid receipt.”
Well, as I suspected, the appraisers are all holding firm in their determination that our property is worth half of what it was only a few months ago, however ridiculous it may be. It doesn’t really surprise me- the appraisers reviewing the determination aren’t going to go out on a limb to say the other guy was wrong because they wouldn’t want him doing the same to them. They all rally around the original decision and refuse to refute it and take on the responsibility for their determinations.
The mortgage consultant called and said that they refuse to acknowledge the wetland part of the property, and assign no value to it whatsoever. She said that is because the wetlands aren’t worth anything. “What?” I said when she made that ignorant statement. She responded with, “The wetlands aren’t worth anything because you can’t build on them.” I wanted to jump through the phone and smack her upside the head at that moment. That statement just showed her ignorance. For one thing, wetlands are worth anywhere from $30,000 to $40,000 an acre for the purposes of mitigation alone. I told her that she was right that we can’t build on them, but no one else can build on them either, so we would be sure that no one would ever build right next to us. The land is still ours, and we would always have the privacy it offers, plus we are free to enjoy the land in many other ways. I asked her if that had no value, and she replied with some bullshit that we have a lot invested so we are biased. I said “You better believe we have a lot invested, but that doesn’t take away from the facts. We find great value in the privacy and natural surroundings of the wetlands, and we are sure that other people would as well.”
It was very clear in talking to her that she really had no idea what she was talking about. She mentioned some crap about developing lots in other areas of the county that were completely irrelevant to the situation, and she just couldn’t seem to grasp that having 7.59 acres of land was more valuable than having a third of an acre with neighbors right on top of you. She told me how she and the underwriter had put in many hours trying to make the loan work, that they were both trying very hard and spent so much time. I had to restrain myself from saying what I wanted to say, which was “Oh boo-fucking-hoo, you have spent so much time on this mortgage. We have spent the past two and a half years of our lives and tens of thousands of dollars fighting to get this far, with no end in sight. You have no idea what it is like to have to go through all this and I do not feel one ounce of sympathy for you.”
Anyway, the outcome of the conversation was that they wanted to approach the original appraiser one last time to see if he would change the value, and if not it would be possible for us to order a whole new independent appraisal of the property (which is kind of how I thought the field review would be). I said we would authorize the new appraisal (pay for it) if we could be sure that the new appraiser would have no knowledge of the other appraisal. She assured us that they would not be privy to that information.