Finding a lot to build on.

First, we had to consider each others’ needs and wants.  We both like rural living, and chose to live away from the hustle and bustle of the Big City, where we both come from.  Having close family ties, we could not move too far away from our families.  I like the mountains, and Sylvia likes the valleys.  We soon discovered that running around on your own is a lot of work and wear and tear on our vehicle.  We tried a realtor, but what we found out is that they like to show their own properties so you are limited unless you use multiple realtors, or do a lot of searching on your own.

One of the problems in choosing a rural area is there are no city utilities such as sewer, water and gas.  That meant alternative options were necessary such as septic tank, perhaps drilling a well for water and installing a propane tank.

Decidedly, the first and most critical problem is water.  There are a number of issues to consider when having to drill a well.  Number one, in this area “the mountains” are above the water table and drilling a few hundred feet for the possibility of finding water is not uncommon.  In this regard, another item to consider is the availability of water.  In the winter, due to rains and snow, as well as springtime, water is plentiful.  However, when summer arrives, the water table drops tremendously.  The levels of water found in the winter and spring are not as plentiful since there is no rain to replenish the use.  Water is a big issue in this area and drilling a well is costly, $8,000 to $12,000, depending on the depth.  And there is no guarantee, there may not be water in the area they are drilling and you will still have to pay the drilling company.  How do you know if there is water or not? 

There is a method of finding water called dowsing or “water witching”.  I don’t know if it really works, but you don’t get your money back if the dowser doesn’t hit water.  However, most of the reputable drillers know from experience  the area where water is likely to be found.  There are maps from the Arizona Department of Water Resources (‘ADWR”) that show the location of all wells drilled in the State of Arizona, and their output.  Having a well on your property is very valuable as long as it is a good one.

The next problem is waste water -- what do you do with it? There is no city sewer and you can’t just pour it into the ground.  It will get very nasty and you will get sick.  The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (“ADEQ”) is the agency that controls the method in which you can dispose of pollutants of all kinds.  In this case maybe a simple septic tank will suffice.  First, you must do a perc test.  A perc test is used to determine if the water will soak into the ground and filter itself back into the water aquifer to be pumped out of the ground again naturally purified.  What if it does not perc?  This creates another problem.  You must use an alternate system approved by ADEQ and your local building department.  A septic system can cost from $6,000 to $10,000 depending on what kind of system you have to use.  What if your leach field or drainage field is too close to your well?  Then you have a problem.

You can reuse some of the water from the house, for example, water from the bath tub and the clothes washer. This water is called grey water.  It is like washing your car.  That water doesn’t really hurt anything, you just can’t drink it, so you can use it to water your trees and grass. This saves on the water bill.

Now, we come to the part about gas, ”not indigestion”, propane or liquified petroleum gas (“lpg”).  This is different from natural gas and you must make sure that your appliance is fit to use propane gas.  You must also take into consideration an area where to house the storage tank.  Remember to keep it accessible for deliveries.

Don’t forget the rest of the utilities you may not have like electric, cable and phone. There are alternate systems for these such as solar power or you may just have to pay to have a power box or line available to your lot.  We had to have this done.  We purchased a lot in a rural community which was not too isolated, but still not totally developed and although there is water and electric in the area, we discovered the electric was not extended to our lot and we will have to pay to get it there.  What the electric company gives you with your service is electricity from the lot line where the power box or line is to your meter on your house.  If you exceed the distance they allow for, then you pay extra to have that extended to your house.  So you must pay to have the box or line brought to the lot and then if you exceed the distance from the box to the house, you may have to pay an additional charge.  Check with Arizona Public Service (“APS”)  for your electric needs. Cable television in many rural communities is not available, but you can get alternate wireless systems like a Direct TV satellite dish.  Internet service is similar, if available in your area. Telephones are another similar issue and wireless doesn’t work everywhere.  Check with your wireless provider.

One last thing, once you work out the bugs with the utilities, what does the lot look like? Does it hang off of a cliff or is it in a wash?  Is there a goat trail to get to it? These are all issues we had to contend with.  If you own a Cadillac or a Camry, it does you no good to live on a rough unmaintained road like one we looked at in a small community that was somewhat developed except at the edge of town where no one claimed responsibility for maintaining the road.  We were looking at it in the winter time with the rain and snow and it was next to impossible to get to in a car.  Fortunately we have an SUV, but even then it was tricky driving.  So what looks good at one time of the year may not be so good at another. The lot itself was on a hill with a wonderful view and I loved it, but the amount of work on the land to make a level lot would have cost more than the price of the lot. Other lots had a little dry creek running through the road until it rained, then they were impassible rivers, which brings us to the flat land in the valley or as some may find, the flood plain, the place where all water comes to rest at the bottom of the hill.  Choose your lot carefully and take your time and check the little things like why is there no grass and why are the trees all black?  Because wild land fires are real and reoccurring events like land slides. Check the history of the area. If this scares you off from living in a rural area, then think about this, every community has conditions, covenants and restrictions (CC&Rs).  Be sure you get a copy from the building department or the homeowners association of that area and read them carefully.  Life is harsh when you want to live with a certain amount of freedom and creativity and realize that you are bound by many restrictions, such as color, style, and size of your house, landscaping restrictions and improvements.  Don’t forget to check your zoning ordinances, such as no farm animals, no businesses, no multi-family dwellings.  You will be greatly disappointed when you discover you can’t do what you intended to do with your new land.

Purchaseing you new found gem.

The current owner may think he has a gem and a price to match it, but weigh in all of the factors first, like the additional costs to make the land useable as mentioned in the previous paragraph Finding A Lot To Build On.  The price of the lot is an asking price based on the market value in the surrounding area, as well as the perceived value by the owner.  Perhaps the owner is a shrewd investor and has knowledge of an upcoming development which may affect the value of his land in some way.

In our area there are many different developments and many price ranges. Some do well and others not so well.  It’s a chance you take. Is the development a desirable one?  Market history and current value are some indicators.  If you are not familiar with the area, you will have to rely on other’s opinions such as realtors, land developers, etc.  Ultimately, you should take everything you learn with a grain of salt, and make your own decision based on the information you have discovered.  Use the current value of the property and the market trend for the area as guiding factors.  Consider how many people have made recent purchases and what were those selling prices?  How does your prospective purchase compare to those?  Compare price as well as improvement potential.  Having a lot that is only 25% buildable is not comparable to the neighbor who has 80% developed property. 

Appraisal value – The land you want to purchase has to be appraised before it can be financed.  A lender will normally lend to the appraised value of the property.  Keep in mind that the lender will need to guarantee his return.  Therefore, the lender will look to find comparable properties that have sold in the area, commonly referred to as "comps".  Should it happen that your lot values at less than the comps, the lender may consider a lesser loan amount.  This means you will have to supply the remainder of the funds necessary.  Realtors have a good idea of what land is selling for, but they also try to drive up the cost in the land.  They control, “testing the market” to see what someone will pay by making the land seem more valuable than it may be. To me land in a wash is not valuable unless maybe you pan for gold, then who knows?  The point is make your own decision and base the worth of land on your own needs and wants, not relying solely on other’s opinions.

The realtor, if you use one, is a mediator in the sale for monetary gain. Realtors work on commission and the realty office gets a percentage of the sale and the salesman gets what is left.  That is why they prefer to sell their own listings.  If they sell another realtor’s listing, they have to split it with that office and the salesman.  A sale is a sale and a realtor from another company may be more likely to get you a better deal than an in-house salesman because they are working for your benefit and not the seller.  The listing agent is working for the seller, not you.

In the purchase contract, it spells out the conditions and you can add in some items of concern to you.  As crazy as they may seem, they must be submitted to the seller for review and acceptance or rejection or counter-offer. You are now haggling, the process of coming to some middle ground where both parties are content with the deal.  Of course, no realtor will go through the work of filling out that big stack of papers for free and not get a sale because you changed you mind and don’t want it anymore so they require a good faith deposit of at least $100 to cover expenses if you bail out of the deal for no reason.  These terms are part of the Purchase Contract.  When you make an offer, you are committing to a contract which is binding.  The only exception is that the law provides a 3-day rescission period where you can change your mind.

We have our land now, after all of the running around and searching for the perfect place we re-evaluated our needs and found a spot that just popped up for sale by an individual. perfect! Or is it?

We found three lots in a remote semi developed area on a corner all together forming one big lot,”1 acre”. The price seemed right, the size was acceptable, they had somewhat of a view all the way around, no near neighbors, homes only, and there is public water. What could be better?

There were two other people interested in the lots individually but we wanted all three and the owners wanted to sell all three at a pretty fair price. What’s the catch? It’s too good to be true.

Finance.

Show me the money. Where do you get the money for a major purchase like this?

The construction phase.

Yes there was a catch. After buying the property, I decided to check out the property a little closer. I called for a survey from a local engineering firm and I had them come out and survey all three lots individually. They asked what kind of survey I wanted and I told them a construction survey but just in case do each lot as if it were separate. I wanted to know about the information given on the survey, what was included for the price, and they said they would locate the benchmark for me and pin all of the corners of all of the individual lots and make a plot map of the boundary line lengths and angles. I wanted a topographical map also but they said it was extra, a lot extra, so I opted not to do that and I would make my own topographical map, how hard could it be? It is one gentle slope from front to back. With the help of a contractor friend I have worked with for several years, we started to check the slope of the land at 10 foot intervals, now I have the information to draw my topographical map.

I found that there was indeed water and the water main ran right through the middle of all three lots. What does this mean? My big one acre lot is worthless, I have easements that divide all three lots and I can’t cross over them, that means I have to keep my big house on one single lot, but that’s okay the house fits the biggest lot where I wanted to build anyway. There is another catch, the electric power box is two lots away and guess who has to pay for it to reach our property? That’s right, we do, we have to run the piping from the last power box to the location of the new one. Oh well, the price of the lots was good so we could afford that minor setback, but what about the sewer? We are in an area of septic systems not public sewer. This brings up a new problem. Time for a perk test, not a problem, we accounted for that but for one big lot, not three smaller lots.

Our original idea was to have a guest house for our parents when they get older and need to be looked after. This brings up the next problem, sure I could put the guest house on the other lot but I can’t use the same water and sewer or electric because of the easements. Now my one big lot is back to three smaller lots with individual water, sewer, and electric, okay let’s split the lots back up and get the perk test done. I called a local excavator that came very well recommended and told him I needed a perk test and he was more than happy to do the job. ”of course a perk test is not cheap and I needed three”.

Oh happy day, he’s here to do the perk test. After quizzing him on the subject at hand he commenced to digging. Wait!  You can’t dig yet, you need to call Arizona blue stake. Ha, fooled you, we did that a week before and the lot was marked, but we wanted to be sure so we did something I was totally amazed at, he asked if I had a piece of wire. I inquired “why”?  He said wanted to locate the lines with the wire. ” water witching” I asked? “yes” he replied. I remembered tripping over a piece of bailing wire on the lot and went to find it. I brought back a piece of wire about 18 inches long and gave it to him and he straightened it and made it into the shape of the letter (L), holding it lightly in one hand by the short end with the long end sticking out to the front he walked toward the area marked by Arizona blue stake and as he came upon the water line the wire turned toward the direction of the water line, (Bu#!*?it) I thought to my self, so I asked him to do it again and he obliged with a new location and he did it again, now I am thinking I need to try this and he handed me the wire. I held it in my hand just as he did and walked toward the line and guess what? Of course it worked. He commenced to explain why. Do you want to know? Well I’m going to tell you anyway. He said “moving water creates friction which in turn creates heat, as little as it is creates a magnetic field which is detected by the piece of wire. The same is true for electricity.” That is the simplified version.

Okay back to the digging, I told him where I wanted to put the septic tank so he went to the front of the lot and started digging. he told me he had to dig two holes, one at each end of the septic area 50 feet apart for the leach field. Keep this in mind, as with drilling for water you only get one test for your money, it better be good. So he started digging and the first two feet was clay dirt, normal, the next three feet was something like layered rock and then? He struck oil! No he hit the biggest darn boulder I have ever seen. “What does this mean” I asked? He explained that the average septic system needs a 7 foot hole in order to function properly and we hit solid rock at five and a half feet. Okay, let’s move to a different location, not where I wanted, but you do what you have to do. We moved to the back of the lot and started digging again. We were close to the water line but not in the easement so we were safe from digging up something besides dirt.  Yeah right, you know what we dug up?  Five feet of dirt and a boulder the size of Arizona, I mean we hit solid rock again. The only thing to do now is check the other lots, there has to be somewhere on this acre of land that I could find a 7 foot hole. not! He dug 9 holes and could not get past 6 feet so he says that’s it, no perk test for you, you have to go with an alternate system. By the way, he only charged me for the time it took to do all of this digging and not the full perk test price, for which I was very grateful and I plan on using him for the rest of my excavation needs.

Now! the fun part. The alternate septic system, I had planed for it but hoped I would not have to do it. The average septic tank system installed cost about $6,000. An alternate system cost from $9,000 to $15,000 plus an engineer to design it for you, costing anywhere from $1,700 to $2,700.

DRAWING PLANS

Drawing plans. It sounds simple but what do you really have to know? It helps to have an idea of how a house goes together, I mean that the dirt is on the bottom, the footing is in the dirt, the stem wall is on the footing, the floor is on the stem wall, the house walls are on the floor and the roof is on the house walls. With this information anyone can draw a house. The question is, can you design a working set of plans?

Let’s start with the dirt. Soil bearing pressure, this is the amount of weight the dirt can hold per square foot, in our area it is 1800 lbs psf standard, in other areas it may be more or less as determined by the local building department. When doing concrete calculations one must know the soil bearing pressure to determine the size of footing needed to support the house. You can have an engineer test the soil for a better result than standard or you may have to get a test because of special conditions.

Next is the frost line. This is determined by the local building department per the local weather conditions like high altitude snow areas or just plain cold places. You must keep the footing below the frost line, the depth below the surface where the ground does not freeze during the winter.

Now the flood plain, that spot of land that all the run off from the surrounding areas likes to go, the low spot. We are on the top of the hill so we aren’t very concerned about runoff, but the building department is concerned about drainage, how the water gets off of the lot.

Next, the wood framing part of the house must be at least 6 inches from the dirt and be able to slope away from the house at a rate of 6 inches in 10 feet so that water does not settle next to the house or touch wood which could cause problems.

HOUSE DESIGN

Let’s design our grand villa.

The original idea was to make the house big enough to be comfortable and do all of the things we wanted to do in life, like sitting on the back porch drinking coffee early in the morning watching the sunrise, or having a get together with friends and family, or maybe an extra room for guest, all of the things we always wanted but couldn’t have.

We started with rooms. The first and most important room is the media room, so I can watch football with my buddies, NOPE! It is the kitchen for my queen her royal highness Sylvia, the whole house will be built around the kitchen, for she must be happy and I must eat. Sylvia likes to cook, so what better social gathering place to start with than the bar? I mean the kitchen. For some reason people like to gather around the kitchen while your trying to work and too many people in the kitchen tends to get crowded and un productive, so we devised a plan, let’s make a bar in the kitchen, no, a breakfast bar to keep people out of the kitchen.

A cook loves to have room to work and a place to put everything so we were going all out in this kitchen. Sylvia thought it would be neat to have a large work station in the middle of the room that guest could stay on one side and she could work on the other side.(MAUI), (the big island.) this thing was 4 feet across and 12 feet long with a sink and cutting area, and a place to put all of her gadgets. And we still had three walls to use.

We designed the kitchen 20 feet wide by 20 feet deep in a U shape with the island in the middle and a 4 foot walk path all the way around. We also wanted the best appliances that we could get like a walk in fridge and an 8 burner stove with a griddle and a double drawer dishwasher, STOP! Lets get realistic, this is a house for two not a restaurant.

We resized the kitchen to be 16x16 with no island but a curved breakfast bar and some moderate appliances. This is the line between wants and needs and the budget.

The next rooms are the living room and dining room because we do want to entertain guest now and again what better than an open floor plan where the kitchen opens up into a large living room and dining room where people could gather outside the kitchen and still be a part of the group, unless your were a quiet type and needed to get away, then there is the library, closed in and sound proof but still a visible part of the group.

The master bed room and master bath were next, I wanted a big hot tub in the master bath, a big walk in shower with multiple shower heads and body jets. The hot tub caused issues with humidity that I did not want to deal with like mold and fungus, so we got rid of the hot tub and replaced it with a jetted tub. We designed for a separate toilet room and his and her sinks. The master bed room needed to be large enough for all of the furniture and a fireplace but after talking to a friend who said” why do you want