<p>Regarding the City, they really won’t put anything in writing. They had a meeting and came up with three possibilities (they don’t know I am trying to sell, that causes a whole other can of worms):</p>
<p>1) Leave As Is
2) Their suggestion - Pull a Maintenance and Repair Permit that gives me 3 years to fix the garage and get a roof on it. They thought they were doing me a favor by offering this solution. This might be something the buyers can live with.
3) Demolish garage and build new 2 car garage to code within 6 months.</p>
<p>The springs linked above are just gorgeous. Water is so clear and beautiful. It will be interesting to see who will pay $10million (asking price) to preserve them.</p>
<p>Absolutely! After 20 years fight with the county, my client had enough of it and sold it for perhaps the price they paid for in the first place.</p>
<p>Our Company has listed 135 acres of land in San Mateo county, now, that is also worth a ga-zillions, even if it can be used as grave yard…:)</p>
<p>My commission, if it is sold as asking? I’d be retired for good…</p>
<p>What are you talking about?
The house I am selling, the first call from my broker who was attending the bank appraiser walk through is “Where are the Cabon-monoxide detectors?” That is a safety issue. And when I finished a re-piping of another house, the town inspector wants to check out the smoke and carbon detectors as well, it was part of the permit…Why? Safety issue.</p>
<p>I begged them to let me build a car port but they aren’t budging off the replacement issue.</p>
<p>I should have just hauled it away ages ago. They would have never known. But my stupid brilliant idea was to wait until after construction complete so as to not draw attention to ourselves and have City snooping.</p>
<p>Then when we had to draw permit, I wanted to wait until after inspection to demolish. But just my luck, I get the one inspector who had been on the property before and recognized the garage from previous owner. So now I’m not really sure if they are driving by checking garage every day or not.</p>
<p>Don’t be that optimistic. Go talk to the city first see what takes to EXPAND a garage. My guesses are:</p>
<ol>
<li>You have to go through planning and they MIGHT tell you need a survey, which is costly.</li>
<li>They might tell you you need electric, that follows whether you can extend your electric to the garage or it needs a separate entry panel with grounding etc. You may have to expand your electric capacity at the main house etc.</li>
<li>You need to provide full plan as to how and where you are going to build, that has to follow the current set backs and building codes. </li>
<li>Now you are issued a building permit, it is a BUILDING permit, not a RENOVATION permit, so you have to follow those steps on inspections, which are MANY!</li>
<li>Since your are EXPANDing your square footage, different fees and assessment rules follow.</li>
</ol>
<p>Tuesday morning and I’m sitting in Jury Duty lounge. I’m reporting that we have no bites on the house after the weekend. We had an Open House on Sunday and dozens of neighbors came through and loved the remodel, but they aren’t buyers. About 4 real buyer groups came through with their agents. My concern is that my agent insisted on an asking price that I feel is too high. I usually plan to list a little below market so that we can blow out the competition, but I let her set the price. She has only been wrong once before, I’m hoping this isn’t the second time!</p>
<p>With every Open House you get weirdos. One guy wanted to try to figure out how to get 7 car garage in back yard. Really!! This isn’t exactly the location for that kind of thing. Then the slightly “off” fancy thankless water heater plumber showed up with a six pack of beer and sat himself down for an hour. My agent finally asked him to go to back patio since the beer was smelling up the house. She said he just seemed lonely, I think he was fishing for work. He calls and bugs me every week trying to get work. Wanted to tell me big story about being 3 months behind on storage unit and could I give him advance on future work.</p>
<p>I am having two contractors look at garage to get advice on how to fix structure of garage. Right now if we put new trusses and roof on the walls would collapse. We have to replace a lot of studs and base plate to hold new roof.
We have had two contractors come through</p>
Around here, the appraisers don’t look at this. But you have to pass an inspection done by the fire department which is where the smoke and CO detectors get checked. Scheduling that and getting the inspection done in a timely manner is yet another bureaucracy we have to deal with.</p>
<p>How much value would a brand-new garage add, vs. the cost?</p>
<p>According to discussion with two appraisers the value added is only about $10k because of neighborhood. A lot of comps without garages. If this was a tract subdivision with 100% if comps with garages it will be a different story.</p>
<p>Have a new wrinkle with garage dilemma. One appraiser has said it is possible that an appraisal report might get to bank stating garage “not functional”. That would be a red flag to lender. We want to just call it large storage because the garage doors are antique carriage rolling doors that are not operational and nailed shut. This might cause issue with City also.</p>