Back To Looking

This week was a busy week with the property. We finally got some of the answers we were looking for as to some of the more detailed construction costs, like pulling the electrical lines to the house site and developing the spring. The news was not good.

The spring is not where we thought it was. Originally we thought it was in the middle of the pasture above the house pad site. That would have made it a simple thing to dig it out a bit, put a box around it and have it drain into a holding tank, which then could have gravity fed to the house.

We found out the spring was at the bottom of the hill at the opposite corner from the house site. That means the spring would have to be developed at the bottom of the hill. One holding tank would be at the spring site with a pump to pump it up to another holding tank at the top of the hill. Then there would be water in case of a power outage as the top tank would be able to gravity feed to the house. We would have to trench and pipe all these lines from the bottom tank to the top tank to the house. More $$$ that we had not expected.

Now for the power issue. It was 900 feet from the power line to the house site. That was going to cost about $10,000. The spring site was about another 900 feet away. Since a pump would be required the most logical thing to do there would be to run a separate line to the spring, which would also entail a separate meter. I'm not sure how far the existing line was from the spring site but it was at least 500 feet. So it turns out that there would not just be one line and meter, but everything power-related was basically going to be double what we were expecting.

Then it turns out to get the road right would take at least $10,000. Though it's partially rocked right now it is inadequate. Add to that the other costs, like the garage (which is required by the bank to get the loan), the septic system, the pad prep, propane, yada yada.

The contractor said his figures were showing the construction costs to be at least $85,000. These were the bare bones figures. He kept subtly trying to tell us the total construction costs were probably not working out to be equitable to the property and house. We could only see the costs going up. And besides that we did not have any extra cash to cover costs involved in case the appraisal came in lower than actual costs. (The bank will not loan anything over the actual appraisal.)

Long story short, we withdrew our offer. ☹

But that just means something better will come along, right?