On the housing front, I've been immersed in an infinitely-layered onion of a problem since September or so. Lo siento for the lack of updates on our house/lot, but a fake legal restriction had me scared to publicize anything of specific substance. What am I talking about? Oh boy.
It all started when I visited the 'permit coach' at Seattle's Department of Planning and Development. I showed up to answer the question: "What do I need to do to clear the land for a permit?", with the specific plan to either build on the lot or sell the lot to someone who will. The permit coach, a reactionary land use attorney, immediately put me on high alert because the lot wasn't registered with the city. It turned out that the prior owner of the property did his job of splitting the property in the eyes of the county, for tax reasons, but never followed up with the city to formalize the boundaries. That caused uppity lawyer to tell me that there was a good chance that I didn't own the lot I've been paying down since 2005. I asked the lawyer, "Have you ever seen the movie 'Brazil'?". She hadn't.
OK, time to get a lawyer. I hired a real estate attorney who echoed all the concerns on the issue. His advice, after a 3-hour $750 consult, was to legally split the lot with the city. That was fine with me. What ensued was insane. He told me to keep out of any news reporting or refinancing of the lot because his design was to run up a huge bill and then sue the prior owner of the lot, who's responsible for the proper subdivision of the property, so I'm 'made whole'. In the end, which you'll read about in a couple paragraphs, I asked the dude, "Have you ever seen the movie 'Brazil'?". He replied, with a chuckle, "Yeah, years ago.".
I paid $250 to meet with a land use specialist who told me to submit a survey. After that, I called an attorney at the land use office who told me that my current assets (an expensive survey and an additionally expensive soil report) were sufficient. Then I showed up at the city office to submit that nonsense, and was told that I needed a separate document, which was essentially an annotated copy of the existing survey but would cost $1000 to file, was required.
Then I got ornery ammo from the surveyor. It was actually like a divine intervention. The city's office is so impossible to deal with, the surveyor gave me advice to avoid the $1000 filing rather than take my $1000. His advice was to follow up with the title insurance agency that secured the purchase of the lot. They never make mistakes, even though they're kind of dumb. Long story short, I contacted them and they took the issue to someone at the city's DPD who was the superior to everyone else I was dealing with.
Well guess what? That guy notified me via informal means that the whole hubbub about the non-existent lot boundaries was just mongering on the city's part. None of the activities defined above were necessary. Not at all. I broke ties with the shady lawyer, the city's incompetent land use office, and a thousand pounds of mess was lifted off my shoulders. Our decision to proceed from here is specifically to sell the lot and move to an existing home, rather than building on the lot. I'm now pursuing a "legal building letter", which essentially formalizes the research done by whom I can imagine is the only person at the DPD that can walk and sing "Jamie's Cryin'" at the same time. Oh yeah, that costs $1000. In one of the last three sentences I shared with that guy, I asked "Have you ever seen the movie 'Brazil'?". He laughed and said "Yup.". And I replied, "Exactly.".
Sorry, hopeful friends and family. I've already had it up to my bushy eyebrows in ding dongs. Rather than submit my growing family to 2+ years of leeching lawyers, artistic architects, and corrupt contractors, our decision is to sell the lot and buy a nice house where we'll live until we're old and ugly. As much as I'd love to build the house of my dreams, the only way we could afford it would be to liquidate the lot, and then the whole topic becomes instantly moot.
What does that mean for you? Nothing really. You'll have to ask me for my address again for next year's Xmas cards, and you'll have to follow a redirect for this blog since our address won't be '131 NW 50th St'. In the meantime, keep looking for more Graham pictures and news on our complex existence. Better mustache pictures, soon.
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