We found out yesterday that September 2006 dossiers are out of the review room! So we have presumably passed muster as adoptive parents for a little girl from China and if we can just endure the loooong wait, we will get her. If only they weren't averaging referring one week's worth of dossiers per month, and there are 40 weeks between where they are now and us! Still hanging in there for now...it's good to know we've passed review, anyway.
OK, tell me not to worry...I probably won't listen, but tell me
anyway. 
I talked to our
realtor today, and she told me that the guy selling the lot (who has a
covenant on the lot that he has to approve our house plans) wants
changes to our plans. She doesn't know what yet, though - she was
supposed to get an e-mail yesterday and didn't. What if it's something
expensive or something we really don't like? I'm trying not to think too
hard about it, but I'm afraid it's going to drive me crazy till I find
out...
Well, the answer back on the architectural review is worse than I had
imagined. Our agent is trying to work a couple of different angles, but
I think the bottom line is going to be that we can't afford to build on
this lot. Here's what they want:
1) The character of the house must match existing homes in the
subdivision (whatever that means - we think mostly it means bigger)
2) Two car garage (we weren't planning to build a garage)
3) Increase in pitch of roof
4) Dormers
5) Porch not adequate (I don't think we could change the porch without
completely changing the house)
6) Vinyl of higher grade
7) Landscape plan to be reviewed (never mind that the lot is so thickly
forested you can't even see the lay of it)
They also want a formal working set of plans and specifications. So even
if we could afford all of these many thousands of dollars of additions,
there is no way we are going to make all these changes, get them to
approve it, and get the well drilled by closing on January 5. We're
screwed. And there are NO other lots we can afford in this school
district right now. 
Well, I think we may play the ADA card...as Bob points out, changing
the porch would make it much harder to get a ramp up to the front door.
And having a two-car garage would be pointless, because we couldn't get
Laurel out of the car and into the house unless we took up one of the
spaces with a ramp and parked the other car outside. We also suspect
that a good chunk of their objection to the "character" of the
house is that it's a ranch house, which is of course what it needs to be
for accessibility reasons. I'm going to contact my friends at the local
agency that handles ADA complaints and see what they think.
Some of the rest of what's asked for is just stupid. The thing has a
massive roof already and would look idiotic with a steeper pitch. We
think the dormers are because they just can't stand the idea of it
looking like a ranch house. And there is NOTHING anywhere that I can
find that says we should have to have a landscape plan approved before
we build, only before we landscape. The two houses that are complete
have minimal landscaping. I personally think the guy is just trying to
be an obstructionist snob. I re-read the covenants last night and see
that he and/or his assignees are the architectural review board until
EVERY lot is sold (then it passes to the HOA). I suppose, what should I
have expected from a guy who named the road after himself... 
Anyway, I don't know how far we can get - it IS still his land, after
all - but if we don't get this, it won't be for lack of trying.
So, I guess the house thing is going to come down to whether or not
the guy is willing to compromise on our not building a garage. I
contacted the folks at the agency that deals with ADA issues and didn't
feel all that positive about their response - this is what the director
said:
"If you can demonstrate that the prohibitions stem from a bias
towards disability and accessibility, I think you have a case. You are
in somewhat uncharted territory. VOPA may be able to provide information
on case histories, if any, and that would be helpful. I'll try to do
some more research as well.
"It would certainly be an interesting case. It's possible that the
threat of a lawsuit might bring closure, but you shouldn't file just as
a threat--you need to be prepared to follow through."
Well, I doubt that I can prove intent, so that doesn't seem too
promising. Meanwhile, the builder has worked up prices for us, and it
would be ~$14,000 for the porch (it turned out they didn't want it that
much bigger, and he was able to design it to work with the ramp),
dormers, and roof (he forgot to include the price of the upgraded
vinyl...I'm hoping we're not talking more than a couple thousand). BUT,
adding a garage would be another $29,000! Well, that is a total
deal-breaker for us. Bob was up half the night just worrying about how
we could pay for the $14,000, but another $29,000 on top of that is just
out. Not to mention, as I said before, it's not like we could park both
cars in it anyway, since we'd have to build a ramp in part of it for it
to be any actual use to us. So we just can't see spending another
$29,000 just to make this guy happy. We can barely see spending $14,000.
Bob was ready to call the whole thing off last night and wanted me to
argue him out of it, but I'm sick to death of that pattern - Bob going
negative, me having to argue, we do it ALL the time - and refused. He
seems to have managed to reconcile himself to the $14,000 (+ siding) on
his own.
So where we are now is that our real estate agent is going to go back to
their real estate agent and see if she can get a verbal agreement to the
porch, dormers, roof, siding, but not the garage. She says she wants to
have this settled by the end of the week and we're totally with her on
that. This is just trashing our holiday spirit! My back has been killing
me and I am just dying to move ASAP - I feel like I'm really reaching my
limit for being able to care for Laurel in our current house. If this
falls through, we are back to either having to move Laurel out of the
school she is doing so well in or waiting till another lot shows up.
Please send some prayers, positive vibes, whatever that the guy gets hit
with a bit of Christmas spirit and goes for the compromise...
No compromise on the house so far...
Apparently the issue is that they think the footprint is too small,
so they don't care if we build a garage per se but we have to build a
garage-sized thing. But here's the ridiculous part - the footprint of
the bigger house of the two that have been built is only 200 sq ft more
and 3 feet wider! (Most of the 200 sq ft, as Bob put it, is that
"their rectangle is more filled in." And about 700 sq ft is
the garage.) Can you believe this?? Do they seriously think someone is
going to go out there with a tape measure? We have the builder working
on overlaying the house plans to demonstrate how ridiculous this is. I
also sent our real estate agent a bunch of links to studies that show
that even things like public housing and group homes don't lower the
price of neighboring houses - so it's damn unlikely that a slightly
smaller ranch house will. Are there really people out there like that?
"Ooh, Harold, I don't think we can buy that house. Did you see what
was down the street? There was a RANCH HOUSE!" If this weren't my
life, it would be funny.
Our real estate agent is also trying to arrange a face-to-face meeting.
What do you think, do we bring in the little girl in the wheelchair? I
worry that she might not be able to stick out a long, boring meeting
with a bunch of adults. I don't want her to be a disruption. But at the
same time, darn it, she's what it's all about.
We're on for a meeting with the lot owner at 2 PM tomorrow. Our real
estate agent said she definitely wants Laurel there, so we will need to
pull her out of school a bit early. I will talk to her about how
important the meeting is - when we have really, really stressed to her
that she needs to behave, she usually tries to (she is such a good
kid!). I'm relieved that we've gotten a meeting - their agent hadn't
been able to reach the owner and we were really worried that he had gone
for the holidays. Or had just decided the heck with us. The fact that he
is willing to drive up here from Richmond (which it turns out is where
he lives) indicates some willingness to listen to us, I think. So wish
us luck - I'll be sure to update tomorrow afternoon!
Well, I'm back from the meeting but I still don't know... we did get them to concede on the garage. It turns out that the Architectural Review Board is three people consisting of the owner of the property, his younger relative who built the largest house in the development on spec and is building a second one, and the real estate agent. The sticking point, it turns out, is the younger relative. He spent a bunch of the meeting nitpicking the design of the roof over the porch (which of course looks the way it does because he insisted on the bigger porch) and the slope of the roof, but I thought that those were all we would have to deal with and it looked like we were winding down to an agreement for another review for those two items and the landscaping plan and pushing back the closing date when all of a sudden, he said, "Wally [that's the owner], you said when we started building these homes that you wanted homes in the range of $500,000 - $650,000. [Or maybe it was $550,000 - $700,000, I can't remember for sure.] Do we think that this home will sell for that much? Because you know, if we let in a house that is worth less, it'll drop the selling price of the other houses in the neighborhood." At which point, I'm afraid I exclaimed, "It will not!" And he says, "Oh, yes it will." And I said pretty angrily, "There are studies that show that you can even build a group home or a housing project and it won't affect the price of the neighboring houses!" but he shut me down, saying "Well, everyone has an opinion." So, now it's come to this: their realtor is running comps (that is, looking at comparable houses to see what they sold for), and our realtor is running comps. If it can be proven that our house is likely to be expensive enough, we're on to another round of review. If not, we're out. I feel like we're in some bad reality show. I think maybe the real estate agent is Paula (he really didn't seem to have any issues), the owner is Randy and the younger relative is Simon. The good news is that they're supposed to give us a decision by the end of the afternoon, so we will hopefully be out of limbo soon. I'm so aggravated, I'm not even sure if I care right now - since if we make it through this round, it means at least one more round with Mr. Personality. Who is not willing to let ANY detail wait till later - our builder tried to convince him that it might be easier to decide how the porch roof should look after the rest of the house was built, but no can do. Nor is he willing to concede that a landscape plan is virtually impossible to do if you can't see the topography. But, I guess it's still easier than waiting for another lot in the school district to come around...
Bob called and said the realtor called him and they have not been
able to reach a decision yet. They're supposed to get back to us
tomorrow. Our realtor was only able to come up with one comp, it was for
$520,000 house + land. She tried to put some more sympathy thoughts in
their realtor's head, but I don't think it will matter - I think the
problem is the younger relative/builder, and he wouldn't know sympathy
if it laid its head on his lap.
I just found another lot (that I swear wasn't there a couple of days
ago) in our school district for $30,000 more. If we take all the crap
back off of the house that they've made us put on, we could just about
afford it - and who knows, maybe these folks would be willing to bargain
on price. I'm feeling sorely tempted to just say the heck with this one
and try for that one instead, even if they tell us yes tomorrow. It
looks like it's a single lot split off a larger one (i.e. not in a
subdivision), so maybe a lot less heartache...
So it got to be 8:30 PM today and still no word on the lot...and Bob and I just went with the feeling that had been building all day and I called and left a message for our realtor on her cell phone that we are walking away from the lot. Enough already, don't want to play Calvinball when only one player gets to make up any of the rules. We drove out to that other lot today, and you know, it's not bad. We don't love it quite as much as the other and it'll be a longer commute, but we've seen way worse - and at this point, not having to deal with Mr. I-Can't-Get-Over-Myself = priceless. So that's it - not settled the way we had thought we wanted (well, the way we WOULD have wanted if we were dealing with normal, reasonable people), but I think now it's for the best. Come the new year, we'll see what we can see about the other lot - when I reread the listing I saw that the acreage is supposed to be adjustable according to the desires of the purchaser (and is listed as five acres - what it is is a proposed subdivision of a larger lot), so it might possible to get a bit less acreage and pay the same or less as we would have paid for the other lot. But that's a question for later...right now, I just want to spend some part of my Christmas season not suffering from angst over a $#!%*!! lot.
Turned out not to matter that we decided to pull out of the lot,
because just a few hours before we left for Minnesota on Sunday, they
finally called to say that we were denied! "They're welcome to come
back with another plan," said the other real estate agent to ours.
"No, thanks," said ours sweetly. Honestly, by then I was just
relieved, since now it is all on them and they have to give our $1000
back with no argument. I figure on Wednesday we'll call our agent and
see if she's made any progress with learning about the other lot I
found.
Trip to Minnesota went OK, although we're all in some stage of being
sick and we had major delays in both directions. We didn't get home
until after 3 AM last night! But it was good to see everyone, and Laurel
was a champ - although she indicated that from her perspective, it
wasn't worth it, and I can see that - looking at it from her point of
view, it was mostly pretty boring. We'll have to try harder to come up
with things that she finds interesting when we go back for Bob's
parents' 50th wedding anniversary in August...