Moving to the Farm

[jinman]

Home selling is difficult. Mobile home selling is even tougher. When my wife sold her 22 acres with a double-wide and barn, the bank didn't want to loan money if the mobile home was not on a full slab. It took an appraiser willing to do some creative writing in describing the foundation for the buyer to find financing. The issue really was that the value of the mobile home was less than the value of the land and the banks always look at structures being easier to sell than land if a foreclosure is necessary. In the end, my wife made a small concession in the price of the land to make the deal work. We didn't hire the appraiser, but we did smile a bit over his description of the home's foundation.

I would just say that since there are no guarantees in life, make sure your purchase and future sale are as easy as possible. Don't get yourself boxed in so that a future sale would be impacted. That full foundation might sound needless and wasteful, but the money you spend today could make your life easier down the pike.

 

[Tororider]

Ah, the joys of home selling. It sure can be frustrating and if you are living in the home, it's a lot of work and inconvenience too.

Yeah, and I won't turn down a showing because who knows, I could be turning down the buyer. So keeping the house tidy is frustrating.

 

[Tororider]

Home selling is difficult. Mobile home selling is even tougher. When my wife sold her 22 acres with a double-wide and barn, the bank didn't want to loan money if the mobile home was not on a full slab. It took an appraiser willing to do some creative writing in describing the foundation for the buyer to find financing. The issue really was that the value of the mobile home was less than the value of the land and the banks always look at structures being easier to sell than land if a foreclosure is necessary. In the end, my wife made a small concession in the price of the land to make the deal work. We didn't hire the appraiser, but we did smile a bit over his description of the home's foundation.

I would just say that since there are no guarantees in life, make sure your purchase and future sale are as easy as possible. Don't get yourself boxed in so that a future sale would be impacted. That full foundation might sound needless and wasteful, but the money you spend today could make your life easier down the pike.

The house we are selling now is a conventional stick built in a nice neighborhood. The plan for the mobile home is to remove it and build on the same property in the future.

 

[Tororider]

Quick Update

I went to the county today to apply for our permits to put the house on the property. I will be interested to see how this goes because I know they don't have a lot of mobile homes put on private property in our county. Hopefully all of our t's are crossed and i's are dotted and we get a call in 7-10 days asking us to come pick up and pay for our permits. The other option is that we need to give them more information or change something, I hope to avoid this. It actually took a lot longer to apply for all of these than I thought. I was hoping it was going to be as simple as picking our zoning compliance approval from the township and give it to the county as is... not so much. I needed to fill out another three page application just to file for our building permits. I then needed to apply for a waiver of soil erosion permit because we won't be close enough to surface water to need an actual soil erosion permit, hopefully. THEN I needed to go to the building next door and find out if the previous owner had ever gotten a permit for a driveway. They didn't have one on file so I had to file a FOIA so they can try to find it. I am really hoping that this goes well and we don't need to do anything else.

Also, we had two showings today and a couple over the last week. As much as I don't want to be rushed into moving, I also have gotten over house showings. Living in a house with four kids, a dog, two adults, where you school your children makes it slightly difficult to keep a house in the condition I believe it should be in to have someone walk through it. So while I will try and be patient and let this all happen in God's time, I wouldn't mind if someone offered us full price and wanted to be in Dec 1st. Just sayin.

 

[Rad1956]

We started with just a pop-up camper on our 51 acres -- then built a cabin -- then our house!

 

[Tororider]

We started with just a pop-up camper on our 51 acres -- then built a cabin -- then our house! <img src="http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=339668"/> <img src="http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=339669"/>

Looks beautiful.

 

[ultrarunner]

Looks great and really like how it hugs the downslope.

 

[Jim Shooz]

NZ is a great place. I spent a year working and travelling around and made lots of friends. Worked at Wairakei Geothermal Power Station,

----they just opened another new thermal power plant there today.

Manapouri construction (1966)

-----So you lived on the Wanganella?

and Ford Motor Company when it had it's plant in Petone - Wellington area.

----Nothing assembled there these days, in fact everything for all manufacturers is imported fully assembled now.

Have been back several times and would like to make another before my time is up.
Good to hear from Kiwi's and their own interesting projects.
Thankls
Jim

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[Tororider]

I haven't lost hope. We are still trying to get our permits. While the process isn't going as fast or as easily as I would like, I know this is caused by our having never done this before so not knowing exactly what needs to be done and given to the proper people at the proper time. To be perfectly honest, I have read lots of horror stories about trouble with local government when people try to build their homes. We haven't had that experience at all. From the township to the county, everyone we have dealt with has been great. They have been more than helpful and quick to respond to all of our questions and requests, spending more time than I am sure they are used to spending on a building project this size.

A prime example of this is our county sanitarian. For some reason my dad and I always assumed the septic field would go in the northwest corner of the property. The test pits that were dug there were marginally shallower than the pits dug on other parts of the property. Well we found the elevation wasn't great and that we would either need to raise the pad on which the house would go, or use an effluent pump to offset elevation. After we decided an effluent pump would be easier than messing with raising grades we found that we needed to have a registered engineer or a private sanitarian design and sign plans for that system. It just so happens that my brother is an engineer so we gave him a call. My brother was able to talk to our county sanitarian, and the sanitarian even sent him some of the paperwork on the property. The two of them were able to come up with a new location for the septic field that won't require changing grades or pumping and will actually be in a better location when we build in the future. A fresh perspective saved us thousands of dollars. In my mind, the sanitarian didn't have to go to those efforts so I am truly grateful to be working with such quality people. And obviously I am tremendously thankful to my brother who brings an engineer's perspective to the project and was able to quickly fix what we thought was going to be an expensive problem.

All this is to say that we are still moving ahead as quickly as we can to get all of our permits. I truly hope that by this time next week we have permits in hand and we have contractors lined up for the cement and the septic system.

 

[Tororider]

While we have been working to get our permits I was able to get the first phase of our orchard planted. I planted 5 apples trees and 2 peach trees. I used concrete remesh to fence around them and keep the deer from browsing and rubbing the trees. You can see my full write up here...
Orchard Phase One… Complete! | homesteaddad

There are some pictures there as well. When I get some time I will try to take some better pictures of the fencing if anyone is interested. All in, I have about $260 invested in the trees and fencing.