Chris and Jan Land Developers (Part 3)

Part 3 - The  development process continues

Plant More Trees

Along the way with trying to subdivide the property and get the application into the county I ran across some unusual requirements.  It really made me wonder what the government does - check boxes?  or come up with reasonable approaches.  One of the requirements was a 10ft buffer around the perimeter of the property.  Within the 10 ft buffer there was a requirement to have a certain size tree spaced a certain amount in effect creating a wildlife buffer of some kind.    The tree survey had to be included on the submission to the county.  To meet this requirement I spent a weekend mapping every tree around the perimeter of the property in the 10 ft buffer. This was then provided to the surveyor to create a plat showing the trees and size of the trees.  Remarkably the county wanted me to plant even more trees to meet the requirements. Bear in mind that the 4.4 acres already had over 400 trees of various sizes... In pointing this out to the county planner I found out she had never visited the property.  Eventually she agreed to drop the requirement for more trees.

1.9 Mile Sidewalk

One interesting requirement was to install sidewalks between the subdivision and schools if less than 2 miles away.  The property as it turns out was 1.9 miles from Johnson Middle School which created a problem.  They also wanted us to install sidewalks on the highway frontage - some 300+ ft in total.  Bear in mind that in the entire Elwood Park subdivision (covering a couple of miles) there was not a single sidewalk. The nearest sidewalk was in Sabal Harbour over a mile away.  Eventually they realized how silly this was and waived the requirement.  They did however make us sign a statement that did not relieve us from the obligation in the future.

The Lucky Fire Hydrant

Another requirement had to do with fire hydrants and required that the closet hydrant be within 400 ft of the property.  Another subdivision that was created a mile away had to install a hydrant at a cost of $70K before the subdivision would be approved.  Lucky for me there was one within 200 ft.  I did not know about this before we bought the property.  I consider that my lucky fire hydrant.

The Septic Resolution

Because of where the property was located (rural) the local sewer system had not been extended to area.   This meant that I had to also obtain a septic resolution which would basically state that there was sufficient room for the septic system and that the ground was sufficiently porous for the drain field.  Seemed a little silly since all the surrounding properties had septic already.  Luckily I located a septic company that provided me an estimate along with some estimated calculations from a friend at an engineering company for a nominal fee I had what was needed for the county... another piece of paper.

The public notice and being on TV

Eventually I had everything needed and then the county was able to put the application on the county commission docket since every approval had to go through the commission for approval.  This also meant that we could now put signs for a "Notice of Public Hearing" on the property and advertise in the local paper (which we had to pay for).  I still remember watching the commission meeting on TV.  The head planner presented the proposed zoning change and outlined the subdivision as well as recommended it for approval.  It was approved unanimously!!

To get to this point took almost two years!

We eventually sold one of the 1 acre lots right after we got approval and last December sold the remaining 2 lots.  In the time between selling all the lots we paid lots of property taxes and had the property bush hogged regularly.  With the crash of the market it had taken almost 5 years from the time we bought the property to selling it all.  We learned a lot along the way and had great partners in my sister and brother in law.  I got lucky on a lot of aspects as you have read and this could have been one of those to walk away from.  We've learned that you can't make money on all of them and the important point is to learn and get smarter with each real estate deal we do..  if it was easy anyone would do it.