Monday, April 7, 2014

Property scouting report, picture time!

Early to bed, early to rise and then go take care of the house and dog sitting before heading out to look over a few properties.

Fresh snow, especially the peaks. Property C is left 8 miles, property A is to the right 7 miles, property B is behind and right 3 miles.

Property A:
Positive: 17 acres, plenty of living space (the most of all 3), amazing views, plenty of sun, price range is near perfect.

Negative: Close to another house, 17 acres is mainly the small mountain and that's mainly unusable, not many tall trees, need new carpet, horrible soil quality (very high desert).
 The house is almost dead center in this picture.
Close up, the one we were thinking about is in the middle, the one to the lower right is a neighbor.
This is from the road (where the house photo's were taken), it's pretty amazing. Didn't bother calling the realtor to see if we could walk around the property, but damn... the view.

Property B:
Positive: 5 acres, we loved the muddy dirt road to get there, it's passive solar heating/cooling, lot's of tree's, didn't seem to need any work at all.

Negative: There is a large cabin 40 feet away (could be solved with a fence), soil quality is horrible, no view, not much sun (what good is passive solar), $40k more than property A.
 Blue door... I know, but everyone has their own idea of what looks good.
You can see it's a lot of bad soil, but that can be dealt with. This spot seemed to have the most sun although we don't know how the property is shaped. We called the realtor to see if we could walk around the property but didn't get an answer.

Property C:
Positive: Not 1 tire track or footprint for over a mile, 16 acres, tall tree's, a small view looking North, a few hundred feet south of the driveway there are huge fields and tree's all over ($600k+ properties if available at all), a wildlife preserve with tame elk, obviously plenty of water with the aspen tree's.

Negative: Can't clean up your place when you list it for sale huh.... The hole in the side with a rope and handwritten in marker: pull rope to ring bell, seemed junky on the property with all kinds of "art" (a 5 foot wooden cross with a horrible attempt at a crucified Jesus, and we think the property is a steep drop down the hillside. Also $40k more than property A (after it was 'reduced').
 Ok, it's taller than 5 feet, just left of center. Odd but whatever, the tree's are nice and you can see the roof of the 'artists shed'
 You enter the top of the A frame, and descend to the main level. The interior shots online were nice, it just needs a lot of cleanup. The artist shed would probably become a woodshed, the pine tree's would have to be cut down, way to close to the house.
This is the left side of the house, snow doesn't count but could have cleaned it up knowing it's for sale. The owners live an hour North of Denver. The realtor had her cell phone number on the sign and answered the phone, giving us permission to walk around. She never asked my name, nor asked if I was interested in the place.

That's 2 weeks of trying to get realtors to contact us, give us information via email and phone calls and we only had 1 real contact... she hung up before I could have a conversation. Had someone bothered to contact me before our trip, I would have scheduled showings at all 3 places. Instead we have to form opinions without all the information.

We both like property B, but for the same money we would rather get the solitude and location of property C if the lot isn't a large ravine.
The views make property A amazing, paying taxes on unusable and potentially rockslide ridden land made it fall almost completely off the radar.
We want to walk the property on all 3 (grants C would be hard for another month or more but it will probably be for sale still). If we can get a realtor to do something. We don't really want to build but in 6 months we will see how that might change.

 Blueberry muffins for the 'BBQ' group meeting and to snack on this week.
Handsome Rock checking for pesky mutant bicycle zombies.... he really goes bat-shit crazy when he see's one. It was overcast and cold, 5 miles without seeing anyone.

6 comments:

  1. I've shied away from several properties that actually had land but it was like your "property A".... unusable. Why pay taxes on something that you can't do anything with?

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    1. I agree. The only way it would be back on the list would be a $20k drop in price, and then we would give it a walkabout. Can you imagine the realtor doing that with us... poor person.

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  2. Interesting choices there, but Matt's point is good. Will be interesting to see what you come up with, in the end.

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    1. We are hoping spring will have more places on the market, and a drop in places currently listed. For $250+ there is an amazing selection but we are trying to get a cabin in the woods, not a mansion on a mountain.

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  3. buddy - all i can tell you is that we bought our place sight-unseen. the seller's realtor was very open and honest - she took pictures of every hole in the wall, all of the unfinished areas, the flooded basement (5ft deep of water), told us that the driveway had to be completely re-graded....very honest. then also told us that yes, the property came with 200ft of private waterfront but there was absolutely no way to get down to it. we considered and considered and then decided to do it. we flew over 1000miles to sign for it and see it - and she was right - there was no way down to the river. it took us an hour to get through 1000ft of jungle forest and we are hikers too!!! but imagine our luck when we went to the ocean the very next day and met a great couple and found out that the guy was a heavy equipment operator. we handed him the keys, came back to the city and in 2 months he cleared the land around our house and built us a road to the river. you have seen all of this on our blog but the only reason i am saying any of this is - sometimes if your gut tells you to go for it - then do so. whatever property you both love the most - go for it.

    i know you have listed out the positive and negatives but a suggestion is give each positive a point-value. same with the negatives. and then add the points. as an example, for me, having a piece of property with no neighbours for miles - that would get 10 points. having a beautiful house on a nice piece of property would get 10 points. but if there was a neighbour right on the property line who could wave to you from his porch, that's negative 10 points. then you add up and subtract the points and see what you come up with. just a suggestion.

    i wish you guys all the best in finding the property that is exactly right for you!

    oh and i haven't had breakfast and actually licked the blueberry muffins on the screen. i didn't actually taste those delicious-looking muffins, but i did learn that i need to clean my screen - bahahahah!

    your friend,
    kymber

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    1. You have a great idea, but since I can't get a realtor to contact me (well one did, letting me know what I was asking about was a listing error) it doesn't matter. That's the frustrating part, possibly finding something that would work and unable to get anyone to contact us.
      The muffins were good, a slight cinnamon flavor and not very sweet.

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