Cue Robert Bradley’s Blackwater Surprise song “Governor” playing in the background. Go ahead and play it now, we will wait.
Below is an e-mail (modified) from a potential client of mine to a local real estate attorney. But first, my editorial comments - it is just a shame to me that the local government planning officials cannot seem to allow simple real property transfers to occur, and just keep their noses back on the permitting and zoning side of things. They are over reaching their powers and we are letting them. I just don’t know what to do. Lawsuits are expensive and only the lawyers win. You can’t fight city hall, right? I am not sure if the e-mail below conveys this very well, but I just wanted to post this and vent amongst those of you who will either commiserate with me or offer some constructive criticism for my personal and professional growth. Rant Off (now on to the e-mail).
Mr. Attorney,
We three landowners (A, B, and C) in the Typical Subdivision have been working on trying to buy property abutting our current property on the north side of Typical Subdivision for some time. I believe Brad Ott has contacted you a few times, so you are at least a little familiar with our problem.
I am looking to get a little more detailed costs from you before deciding whether to make another offer on the property.
The county is basically telling us we have to spend a quite large amount of money to get the property vacated out of The Current Subdivision and platted into Our Typical Subdivision. We are not rich, and simply cannot afford to spend this amount of money on top of what the seller wants for the property. We do not want these lots to be buildable lots (other than maybe a mini barn or tree house), but are simply buying them to maintain a buffer between our houses and any future development. We can’t afford to add a bunch of costs to this process.
Brad Ott is saying that he believes the county should let us buy the property and just get a survey done to split it into three parcels (not buildable) and record this at the county without having to do any extra work. He did ask the county “wouldn’t this project fall under the Exempt Subdivision definition, “d. A division of land for the sale or exchange of tracts between adjoining land owners, provided that no additional building lots are created by the division”?
The county came back with “I have always interpreted that section to mean moving of property lines (Neighbor X divides out a piece of his property and sells it to adjoining neighbor Y, who adjoins it to his property). In this case, three new lots are being created.”
Brad suggested that we have a meeting with the county, yourself, him, and us to try to convince the county to agree with his statutory interpretation. I figured this meeting would take a few hours, but would also require prep work from both you and Brad before we have it.
What I would like to get from you is not to exceed prices for the following specific items:
1 – Your not to exceed price for your legal review of the statutes and regulations and providing an interpretation back to us as to what you think the chances are of us convincing the county to let us buy, split, and record the property without all the vacating, rezoning, and re-platting. This would allow us to spend a minimal amount of money to try to decide whether it is worth actually having the meeting with the county. If you say there is a very slim chance of the county agreeing with us, it is probably not worth us spending our money to have the meeting.
2 – If your review under item 1 is promising, I would then like to get your not to exceed cost for you to actually attend a meeting with the county, Brad Ott, and us to plead our case to them. We cannot afford a protracted process of multiple meetings, court filings, etc., so for us it is probably more of a one and done meeting. The asking price for the property is only $39,000 and we can’t afford to spend an extra $10,000 to buy it.
If you have any questions concerning this email, feel free to email me back, or you can call me on my cell phone at 123-456-7890.
Thanks, Poor Potential Client
Yes, sounds familiar and it does stink.
> He did ask the county “wouldn’t this project fall under the Exempt Subdivision definition, “d. A division of land for the sale or exchange of tracts between adjoining land owners, provided that no additional building lots are created by the division”?
>
> The county came back with “I have always interpreted that section to mean moving of property lines (Neighbor X divides out a piece of his property and sells it to adjoining neighbor Y, who adjoins it to his property). In this case, three new lots are being created.”
These two statements are saying the same thing to me. Just do the second thing, three times?
or
Can one guy adjust his line for all the property and then give the other to easements?
Sounds to me like you are taking 4 lots and making 3. Or you could present it as three separate boundary line adjustments.
seems to me that you do not need to create 3 new lots, but rather combine these new lots into the lands of the 3 owners. My approach would be to prepare a plat showing lots 1R-2R-3R and enough info to prepare a metes and bounds description of the piece to be acquired on each. That should fit the definition of recombination, provided the remnant tract these 3 new parcels come from still meets zoning.(or the 3 tracts comprise the whole parcel) Hope that makes sense.
Heck, why don't they pool their money, buy it together and file the deed as 1/3 undivided interest to each owner?
Andy's idea would work. Each owner would have 1/3 interest in the land. A separate survey map can be drafted showing each 1/3 interest in the form of "boundary lines", you could further create a legal description for each interest. In essence you would be creating a "mini-condominium" with by-laws. This happens a lot here in Hawaii.
It might also be possible to create easement rights for each of the three owners along these "boundaries" without going through the burdensome approval process. The owners could agree to split the land cost, as well as taxes and other future expenses, based on the areas of those easement rights.
That type of BS becoming more and more prevalent in some parts of the country add to my pleasure in living where I do. Most of our public officials have the intelligence to actually support actions that keep the citizenry happy and the property valuations increasing instead of creating roadblocks to neighborhood improvement. Much of the bureaucratic overload goes back to little people in little jobs attempting to make those jobs appear to be extremely important so as to ensure their future employment and pay raises.
Hawaiian Post
> Andy's idea would work. Each owner would have 1/3 interest in the land. A separate survey map can be drafted showing each 1/3 interest in the form of "boundary lines", you could further create a legal description for each interest. In essence you would be creating a "mini-condominium" with by-laws. This happens a lot here in Hawaii.
Aloha, first time I am seeing another post from Hawaii!:party:
Very many thanks to all. All you comments are helpful.
Please stay tuned for more red tape postings on other projects in nearby communities, unfortunately.