Getting Set Up

We don't have our building permit yet, but Wayne said it would be in the next few days. He's scheduled to have the house staked by a professional surveyor on Monday. Right now he plans to start excavating on Wednesday.

We got about 5 inches of snow just in time to start the house. It shouldn't slow things down, though. It's supposed to be pretty nice through next week.

2230 Kechter Road!!!!

It is official - just got notification that the plat has been recorded -- welcome to phase II of our project, CONSTRUCTION! :-)

Still Not Sure if It's Official

Our builder can't apply for a building permit until the plat is recorded. I'm still not sure it's done yet. It was supposed to happen at 9AM this morning, but at 8:45, I got a message from Land Title that the county recorder needed to record the development agreement (DA) before the plat. Engineering has the DA, so it is at the city. I'm assuming they are scrambling to get it done, but that it will happen today.

On a bright note, we got the refi done and our attorney signed the plat. Now I guess the order needs to be DA, Plat, Deed.

I left a message for Wayne that it would be done today. I'm still wondering.

It's Not Over 'Til It's Over

Message from Land Title:

Just got off the phone with Karla- the plan is.......
Close at 1:00 tomorrow
Mason Mitchell at 2:30
Steve in Planning at 3:00
Steve will take plat to Karla's office (she's off tomorrow) I will meet Karla at clerk and recorder's office Monday morning at 9:00-she will bring plat and development agreement- I will bring deed of trust.
Jennifer- FYI- we still need an improvement location certificate- I've talked to Chad at JR he is going to do it and get it to me by closing
tomorrow- charge is $200 - I will collect it on the settlement statement at closing.
Let me know if either of you see any problem with this.

Plat Drawing

I have it. In my hands. Signed by everyone but our attorney, which will happen on Friday at 2:30PM. Then we go to the courthouse to record the document at 3:15 and everything will be official.

Is this really happening?

Making Visible Progress

Today I got a note from the city that the utility plans have been signed by engineering. Finally!! I need to drop off our development agreement, pick up the plans and take them to our engineer. The engineer needs to sign and stamp them and then make 7 paper copies and 1 mylar copy for the city. They also are required by law to keep the original in their office. They have committed to turn them around in a few hours.

So today in between work meetings, I will drop off the DA and pick up the plans from the city and drop them off at the engineer. They will make copies and have them ready for me to pick up by later this afternoon. I will pick them up after the vet appointment I have for Taffy and Cookie and then if I have time, drop them off at the city again.

I'm not sure if they will also have the plat for me signed and ready to go, so I will wait to see what I get before I contact our lender to get the final refinance done and recording of the plat. That will then be the end. I see it in sight, though. Could be as early as Friday, but at latest early next week. Whew!

One Micro Step Forward

We received the Development Agreement for the city yesterday! Miles and I reviewed it and it's just a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo. We're not going to have our attorney review it because it would cost us a lot of extra money and time and probably would only be able to make a few minor changes. It looks pretty boiler plate anyway.

The only surprise to us was that now the city has decided that we will NOT be able to put the money for design and construction of the Kechter Rd. improvements into a letter of credit from our bank. We'll actually have to write them a check for the improvements and put into escrow. This is really frustrating because the improvements may not happen for a long time. Not sure if they need to get everyone aligned or if the city is going to have to come up with the rest of the funds, but we don't see these improvements happening for awhile. Now that we've paid, I'd like to see them done sooner, rather than later, but I can't get wrapped around the axle on this one. Just glad that we're moving forward.

Miles and I will sign and I will return to the city tomorrow, since today is veterans day, the city offices are closed. Not sure how long the rest will take, but I think we're close. Could be as early as Friday, or maybe early next week.

Hurray!

Frustrating v.2

I cannot find the words that express how frustrated I am with the lack of follow up and sense of urgency from the city. We are in the last stages of our project, but I can't get ANYONE to speed it up a bit. I need several signatures. That's it. It's not like they haven't seen these drawings before or know what's going on. We've been at this with them for 17 months!!!!!

I am still waiting for several signatures on our drawings. Then, the drawings have to go back to our Engineer for their signature and copies. Once the copies get back to the city, they can sign the plat and then I can coordinate with our attorney and the title company. After that, I also need to coordinate the city planner and the county clerk to meet us at the courthouse so we can get this recorded. It really isn't that hard!!

I don't fee like I have ANY recourse. At least at work I can escalate to a manager or someone if something isn't getting done, but in this case I'm even afraid to rock the boat too much for fear that they will just ignore me and not get it done at all!!!

I really can't believe that another week has gone by.

Can We Just Get This Over With?

Here's a copy of an e-mail I sent to the city today. This just sums up where we are, ugh!!

Hi Susan,

Thanks for speaking with me yesterday. I'm just following up on our conversation so that I can give an update to our attorney and the title company.

As I understand it:

• The utility and plat mylars were dropped off at the city on Thursday, October 23 (see attached).
• As of yesterday, November 3, none of the utility signatures have been completed. Seems to me like 7 business days should be enough time? What is the hold up?
• The DA was on Sheri's desk for final approval and then going to the city attorney yesterday afternoon.
• Sheri mentioned at the development workshop Steve hosted about the Kechter / Trilby area, that the DA should take about 3 weeks. I sent the DA information on Thursday, September 11. Seven weeks is 4 weeks longer than the average length. Do you know what the hold up was with this agreement? I assume we will get the final for our signature this afternoon, tomorrow at the latest?
• I will wait to hear from you that the utility drawings have gone to JR Engineering for final signature and copies before I get our attorney and title company scheduled again to complete the process and record the plat.
• Miles and I will ensure that the DA is signed and sent back to you within 1 business day of receiving it from you. I assume this only needs to be notarized and no other signature is required?

I think that's it. Please let me know either by phone (303) 588-6086, or by e-mail when the utility drawing signatures are completed. Again, I would be happy to pick them up and take them over to JR Engineering if you need me to.

Thanks,

Jennifer

Amazing

I just heard from the city - they have agreed to our proposed timing of the plat signatures. I think we're actually going to get this done!

Frustrating

We now have our mylars printed and are going through the signature process. We have run into a little glitch because our current lienholder's local office has closed. They won't be available to sign the drawing prior to the attorney. The attorney won't sign until after we re-finance and release the lien. The city wants to sign last and the mortgage company needs the plat recorded the day we close on the new loan.

I've asked the city if they will sign before the attorney so that we can complete this process without having to go through a 3-month lien release process and put our whole project on hold until we get that done.

I sent the request last Thursday and have heard nothing from the city. I haven't been able to sleep at night I'm so stressed about how we will get this done. The city is not known for being very flexible.

Also, the water district signed the drawings and then when I was at the rural electric association to get them to sign, realized that the water district missed 3 pages. Now I haven't heard from them yet either.

The logistics are too complicated. I wonder why the city doesn't go digital. Pretty amazing that we're still passing mylars around...

Just Six to Eight Weeks

If anyone in the last few weeks has asked me when they think we will break ground on the new house, my answer is, 6 to 8 weeks. I think that's been my standard answer for the last 6 weeks. Hopefully we'll make some real progress in the next week so that I can revise my answer to something a little more concrete.

Right now we're waiting on several things:

1. The city to finish making final comments (again) so that the engineer can make final edits and print mylars.
2. Once the mylars are printed, we will get signatures and record the new plat drawing and utility plans.
3. We need to complete the development agreement. This needs to be complete before they can issue a building permit.
4. We need to make the final decisions on a few things, like plumbing, before our GC can apply for a building permit. Luckily we can apply for the building permit anytime and can do that congruent to the finalization of the plat drawings.

Six to eight weeks...

Molasses

It is so frustrating waiting for others to get things done and having no power over getting it done. The engineer has had the feedback from the city on some very minor changes to our drawings since September 12. As of this week, I still haven't heard from them, so I started pushing on them. They finally submitted the final plans to the city for review on Tuesday, September 30. And I found a few errors still! I asked them to make the changes and they will wait until they hear from the city so they can make all the changes at once.

Now we are waiting for the city engineer to respond. I've sent her an e-mail and left her a voice mail. I am getting anxious now because we have to coordinate all this with the refinancing of the investment property. I am still a little fuzzy on the timing and how everything will work. The city departments need to sign the drawings, the water district needs to sign and then our attorney needs to sign the plat. He won't sign the plat unless he gets notification from the title company that the lien has been released, which will happen when we refinance. So, everything has to happen at the same time!

I hope the city engineer gets back to me soon. I'm hoping we can coordinate this meeting with the attorney, the title company and mortgage company and then get the plat recorded all at the same time next week. Only hiccup is that all the people in the city and the water district, oh, and the rural electric company need to be around for signatures prior...

It's a miracle that we've gotten this far. But, we need to keep persevering. We're hoping to submit our application for a building permit next week as well, which can go in parallel to the finalization of the plat and utility plans.

Oh, and one more thing. We have to finalize the development agreement and get a letter of credit signed for the city for the future design and construction of the road improvements.

Process Update

Amazing how much time flies in between work, kids and house project. I meant to update on September 10 after our city final staff review, but here it is over a week later...

We had our final staff review on September 10 and it lasted maybe 10 minutes. Engineering had a few minor comments, typos and moving things around a little bit on the plans, but that was it.

We also found out that instead of laying up cash to put in escrow for 125% of the value of the road improvement on Kechter Road, we can, in fact, provide a letter of credit to the city for the improvements. This was a huge development for us.

Originally the city planner told us that we could do this, but somewhere during the process, engineering got confused and told us we could not do it. But she must have since learned that we could and now we will do that. We will have to have our bank approve us for 150% of the estimate that we got from the engineer, which was about $24k. Yea!

Other news:

1. We finalized the house plans with the designer and have now gone to engineering to get the house engineered. We got 2 bids for that. One was over double what the other was, so that was a no brainer.
2. Financing is under way and we'll re-finance the front property as an investment property and the second property as a construction to permanent mortgage.
3. We can submit for a building permit at any time and our builder is working on getting his license in the city of Fort Collins (Windsor, where he is currently building, doesn't require a license).
4. I filed our easement agreement with the county today. That was fun, we actually filed a legal document.
5. Once the civil engineer completes the minor updates from the city, they will print mylars that we'll need to run around and get signatures. And then the city routes them to all appropriate departments.
6. After mylars are signed, the engineer has to stamp 11 copies and then we're ready to file.
7. Once the filing is complete, we will be able to get our building permit issued and get the financing completed.

The process sounds simple, but I'm sure there will be surprises in the next few weeks. We're hoping that we'll actually be digging a hole in the next 4-5 weeks. That means building through the winter. Hopefully we'll have a mild winter -- no 3 foot snow storms!!

I will try to get more regular updates done because things will start to change quickly.

Moving Forward at a Snails Pace

A few things have happened since my last post. I haven't had a chance to update in a while because my new job is keeping me busy. Anyway, here are updates and next steps.

On the city process front:

1. We talked to our attorney and he did some additional research on the city code regarding the signing of the plat drawing. He concluded that he could certify without our neighbor's signatures. Yea! But why didn't he do that to begin with? (The easiest thing, and cheapest, was to get our neighbors to sign since they all indicated last year that they would support this project.)
2. We validated a few things with the city and scheduled our public hearing. The public hearing took place on July 30, 2008.
3. The neighbor who refused to sign the plat drawing sent a detailed letter to the city protesting our project. They cited that we were in direct violation of existing Deed Restrictions and Covenants applying to the property. He also said that he would take whatever action is appropriate to make all parties involved in this unlawful breach to fully comply with the restrictions. OK, I could completely go off on this, but I think it would take up way too much time and energy. Suffice it to say that we have fully complied with the city and county requirements and went through the proper legal process to remove the restriction on our lot. The city said he could still sue us in civil court, but unless we've missed something (I doubt it), then I can't imagine what grounds he could do this.
4. During the city meeting, the City Planning Director brought the letter up to our attention and was very glad to see that we had the legal document from the county removing the restriction from our property.
5. The city gave us an unconditional approval to move forward with the sub-division of the lot.
6. Next steps with the city are the final staff review (scheduled September 10) and the development agreement.

On the house front:

1. In March this year we had a soils engineer come out and give us a soils report regarding the soils on the site where we plan to build the house. They found ground water at approximately 8 feet and found that we had low perk rate soils. This meant that we would have to have an 'engineered' septic system to accommodate for our clay soils.
2. When they did their soil sample, they also put a pvc pipe with holes in it so that we could see what the groundwater did while we irrigated in the spring.
3. Irrigation started in May and less than a week into it, we had water in our pipe up to one foot. We had many engineers tell us that it just wasn't possible to put a basement into ground with water at 1 foot.
4. We talked to many people about houses in Michigan and the East Coast where groundwater is high, but they still have basements. They put in pumps and treat the foundation so that water is mitigated.
5. We also observed that the water went back down to 8 feet less than a week after the irrigation stopped.
6. Miles finally found an engineer that was smart enough to point out that there is no way, if groundwater was at 8 feet, with low perk rate soil, that the groundwater level could rise and then fall that quickly. He suggested we dig a trench and take samples down to 8 feet to see if we could tell what was happening. His guess was that water was coming in over the top of the pipe and filling our hole.
7. Last week, Friday, August 22, we had our soils engineer come out with a back hoe and test the soils. He confirmed what the other engineer guessed and our groundwater situation is at 8 feet, not 1 foot. This is huge. Now we can build our basement down 5 feet (you need 3 feet before you get to groundwater), we can install sump pumps and a french drain and have our basement. This also means that our septic, instead of $30k will likely cost more like $7-10k.
8. So now we have our house designer completing the basement plans and getting the drawings ready for our structural engineer. We will also need to get a drainage plan together as well. We're hoping in the next few weeks we'll be able to submit our plans to the city to start the building permit process. I've heard people say that could take 3 weeks and some people say 3 months. But, at least we're moving on a few things.

Hopefully I'll be able to update with a little more frequency now. I've also started our picture chronology that will capture the building of the house from grass pasture to finished and landscaped house. Fun.

Another Bump in the Road

Hard to keep up with the posts, but we got some news today.

After talking to our attorney, we found out that the president of the BWA in fact cannot sign our plat as a representative of the water association. We would have to get each one of our neighbors (6 of them) to sign our plat drawing. In addition to this, we will need each one of them to sign a letter of intent saying that they will sign in order for the City Planner to schedule our public hearing.

A bummer, but not the end of the world. All of our neighbors agreed to sign a letter stating that they would allow us to remove the note from our original plat drawing in the county. This signature signifies much less. We are not proposing any changes to the ditch, meaning the water won't change, the flow won't change, etc. So, much less material than the plat note that was on the original drawing. The only difficult one would be the family that live in GA, but we've spoken to them before and they've been agreeable.

I sent a letter to them (because I don't know their phone number), giving them the details and asking them to sign our letter of intent. We got a note back from them yesterday simply stating that they do NOT intend to sign. No explanation, just 'no'.

I'm going through all sorts of emotions on this. Part of me wonders if they just don't understand and we should just call them. Part of me thinks that since they are trying to sell their property, that they just don't want to upset the apple cart, part of me thinks that they are pompous jerks and don't want someone else's plan mingling or possibly diminishing their opportunity to sell. I don't think it will, but they must perceive it that way, otherwise I don't see any reason why they wouldn't sign.

I am so bummed right now. This isn't going to stop us, but it will certainly slow us down and it will certainly end up costing us more money. I am so bummed that one person could do that to us! Our dream house! But, I don't think they can stop us. There must be some other recourse or path we can pursue.

So, since I'm still traveling, Miles will have to call our attorney on Monday and see what our plan B is going to be. What a drag.

Finally, Some Progress

We finally have some progress to report. This was a busy day on the project front. Wow.

After receiving the paperwork from our lien holder regarding how to release a lien, I was bummed. Not only would the process take 4-6 weeks, not including our time to get everything arranged, but also cost us $500 for the processing and who knows how much in appraisals, etc. So, I called the mortgage broker who will be doing our new loan and she advised me that the current lien holder only needed to sign to acknowledge that they owned a lien on the property. In addition to that, she advised that we talk to someone in the local office. I called our lien holder's local office and the VP there will be able to sign - yea!!!

Miles also FINALLY got ahold of the President of the BWA. He signed our letter of intent with no problems or questions whatsoever.

Monday I will call our attorney and just verify that the President can sign and that the lien holder simply needs to state that they hold a current lien on the property. After that, I'll take the LOI over to the city and we should be good to go to hearing.

We have a meeting with the city on Tuesday where they are reviewing with all the property owners all the development opportunities and challenges along Kechter, Timberline and Trilby Roads who all face similar challenges. I really need to set up a consulting business for this! It is an all day workshop with the city. I'll be interested to see who shows up.

Miles also met with our builder today to discuss exactly where we want to put the house and find out what options we have with the ground water being so high. We may be OK, but we have some research to do. The builder is waiting for the plans, so I called our designer to see what was up. Turns out, he was waiting for us to give him the go ahead. Everything looked great, so we're good to go. He'll finalize plans and get them to the builder.

We met with the kitchen designer this week too. He showed us 3D models of his design. We made some minor tweaks and I think we like what we're seeing. He's going to make our suggested changes. We also made some changes to bathroom cabinets as well.

We think we want to go to another cabinet maker to see what kind of design they'll come up with. We might do that a little later, but we needed to get something in the works so that our builder had an idea of cost.

On Bluestem news, we had the inspector, staging consultant and appraiser all come today. Pretty extensive comments from the staging consultant, but nothing different than what I was thinking anyway, so I think we're on the same page. We do have a lot of work to do, but we'll just take one room at a time. It will be at least 3-4 weeks before we can get the house on the market anyway, so we've got a little time. We will have lots of packing and throwing to go.

The inspector came up with very little to do, so that was good. We also think the appraiser may come in with a higher square footage than what was disclosed when we bought the house, so that should be good.

Progress is good! Now I won't be able to sleep tonight because I'm excited that we are making some progress. At least that's better than not being able to sleep because we've got a long drawn out process with our neighbors and with our lien holder. That was the best news of the day!

City Process Update

Here's the last message we got from the city engineer:

Just to make sure you have the info you need, Paul Eckman (city attorney) stated in his last email that your attorney would have to be the one to decide who needs to sign the plat since he is the one that has to certify your plat. If he says that only you need to sign, then your project is good to go to hearing. If he determines that others need to sign, then we will need letters of intent from those affected property owners prior to scheduling the hearing.

I talked to our attorney and he did determine that the easements on our property are owned by the Blehm Water Association (BWA). So, all property owners will need to sign. We're trying to get ahold of the President of the BWA to determine if he alone can sign, or if we've got to get everyone to sign. That would be problematic since many of the property owners don't even live on their properties - one is located in GA. We've been trying for a week to get ahold of the BWA President, but he hasn't called back. Once we get his opinion, I can go back to our attorney to make sure he's ok with the President signing. If he is, then we're likely good to go on that front. The BWA President would need to sign a letter of intent for the city so that they know he'll review and sign the final plat drawing.

Our attorney also determined that our lienholder will need to sign the plat. OMG!!! So, I've got a call into them. It didn't sound like that big of a deal. They talked about a lien release, so that might be all there is to do on that. I remember our new loan provider (we will re-finance when everything goes through) and she mentioned that if we re-finance then we likely won't have to get a lien release from our current provider. But, the attorney said that if the lien is on the current property as-is, then he wanted the lien holder to sign. We'll see how that goes.

So for now, just waiting (again)... It will be exactly a year since our first conceptual review with the city on June 11.

Continuous City Confusion (CCC)

We had a public hearing date scheduled for June 11 and then lost it. The city engineer is still causing problems about what to do with the ditch easements. It seems as if they have never had to deal with these types of issues and it's causing everyone a bit of confusion.

As I've mentioned before, the ditch itself does not appear on our property. Our property is serviced by the New Mercer Ditch, but they are private ditch laterals owned by us. The city wants to be sure that no other property owners are affected by our plat. I guess I can understand why, but it is clear that the engineer has no idea about this stuff.

We thought the city attorney cleared it up, but then the engineer (Susan), brought in some more confusion and is requiring that our attorney write a letter to the city stating that no other properties are affected by our subdivision.

We don't know when the public hearing will be, but we won't make June 11. I sent an e-mail to our attorney so that we can get this issue resolved.

Straight to Hearing

John at JR Engineering just saved us 2 weeks, plus at least a few hundred dollars ($200-300 for copies and more meetings and time from JR Engineering). He convinced the city that we didn't need to go through another round of submittals and we'll go straight to public hearing. Wow! That was unexpected.

A good surprise for once. Not sure what the timing of the public hearing will be, but I'll call Steve Olt later today.

Fantastic!