Homebuying Adventures, Part 2... Septic Failed Inspection

TL:DR The deal's off....the septic is toast.

It's been a roller coaster for sure. I got the septic inspection for the place on No Name Rd on Monday. The guy opened the lid, took one look at it, and told me (First words out of his mouth) "The tank is failed."  It was one big, cracked, rooted mess. On top of that, the tank is right next to the property line. This may have been ok when it was put in in the 70's (septic guy's guess) but it's not ok now.  Now it has to be 5' away from the line. Not to mention other distances from the foundation, potable water lines, etc. It would be highly, highly unlikely they would issue a repair permit for it where it is, a new system would have to be installed somewhere else. And the only spot that would comply with all the setback requirements (canal, lake, their well, adjacent wells, property lines, potable water lines) would be......under the existing structure.  So, the choices are, A. limp along with the current one and be very careful with water use, etc. B. Rip out the structures and put in a new tank.  Rip out and relocate the well pump, water lines and palm tree and put it there and I'm not even sure that would comply.  Hard to know for sure without the survey and thankfully I hadn't already shelled out the $700 for that.  But the septic guy said "If you could move it five feet from the property line you'd be ok, but then it's too close to the house.  C. Try to get a variance and easement to replace it in the current spot. This would cost thousands and take years if happened at all. They're not exactly consumer friendly in this county. If you're not a big developer they're not interested in helping.  D. Try to get someone to do the work without a permit. I have no idea how feasible that would be but then when I go to sell the first question is, hey, where's the permit for this new system?  Any way you look at it, there would be significant money, time and headaches involved.

Anyway, when I got that report I advised the realtor that I was cancelling the contract. Thank god I had the inspection contingencies.  Within hours, the sellers advised me they were willing to make a significant price concession if I would accept the property as-is. Well, I gave it some thought. I wasn't planning to build on the property any time soon, if ever. (Since the whole lot is in a flood zone any new structure has to be at an 8 foot elevation so that's a whole 'nother can of worms....)  I currently have a composting toilet in the RV and I could put one in the house. I'm good at managing that and graywater so I could do it in the house too. Though one reason for BUYING something with a house on it was so I could take a shower without worry, just flush my toilet like a normal person, not have to throw my TP in the trash, and wash clothes without using a laundromat. I suspect that's why there's no W/D in it now. The current owners never lived there but the ones before them did. I bet they were babying that tank too. Why else would you not have a washer and dryer??  Anyway, after weighing it for a bit, I decided that I did love the place and I could live with the composting toilet option.  I told the sellers I would take their offer.

I went back to the property yesterday to double check a few things, measure the fences, etc. Turns out the fence between them and the rear neighbor IS on the property line so the tank is too close. What I didn't expect to find is that the fence between them and the neighbor across the road is way OUTSIDE the property line. It's a dead end street but the street right-of-way goes all the way to the water's edge. It belongs to the county. Nobody may be using it but you still can't just fence it in and use it. Once again....no permit. The well may even be in that right of way, it's certainly close. Once again, it would take a survey to know for sure. I learned a few more things that concerned me.....no one ever went through the process to de-title the trailer and convert it to real property. (permits, fees and taxes involved there) AND the sellers never got title to it. :-( You have to do one or the other.  Sigh.......the person that sold it to them is dead so now there's more headaches involved, as the title insurance company won't insure without that. I heard that directly from the title insurance company. I guess when they bought it, they bought it from a sick close friend for a pittance and never did any of that. No title insurance, simple quitclaim deed, no survey, etc. Maybe trying to save $$, I don't know.  That may come back to bite them now.

While I was at the property I looked more closely at the construction of the addition. Pressing my hand to the wall I was astonished to find that what I thought was beadboard paneling over drywall turned out to be plastic panels over plain, unbacked styrofoam. I don't know how that would react in a fire but I don't think it would be good. The uncovered styro I could see in the bathroom where the back of the vanity had disintegrated had no markings to indicate it was fire resistant or anything other than the plain styro you get at Hobby Lobby. I also noticed that the skirting in the back was bowed.......like the trailer had subsided a bit. Also, a tree had fallen on the roof and punched one hole I could see and put a big dent on the roof. Now that I knew the panels were plastic and wouldn't show signs of water damage I was a little more worried about that.

In any event, I had measured the appliances that needed to be replaced so I went back home to wait for the sellers to sign the paperwork. And wait. And wait. I was wondering what was taking so long since they were the ones who made the offer to me. I woke up the next morning and nothing. An hour or two later I got the news I had been expecting....the sellers were backing out of the deal. Sigh. I guess I was expected to counter, but I was frankly done. I had told the realtor that I absolutely wasn't paying a penny more, and I meant what I said. It's a shame, it's a pretty lot, but the fact that it's in the 8' flood zone with a failed septic means that anyone trying to build on it will incur thousands in extra costs and extreme difficulty in getting homeowners insurance. Since I didn't plan to build it wasn't as big a deal for me, but it would have made it a struggle to sell down the road.

Homebuying Adventures, Part 1

I wasn't too keen on the idea of spending thousands to build on my lot as I didn't think I'd recoup the value upon selling. So I started looking at other options. I found a cool-sounding property on NoName Road in Youngstown FL listed at $67,999. It was an old (1994) RV trailer roofed over with an addition that had a sunroom, bedroom and bathroom. It had water frontage on two sides on canals of Deer Point Lake. It seemed a little pricey for an almost 25 year old RV with an addition of undetermined age and quality, but I decided to go look at it.  When I got there with the realtor I found it wasn't in nearly as good shape as the pictures appeared. First thing I noticed was a tree had fallen on the roof and put a huge dent and a hole. While the place had been vacant for years, it was obvious they knew about it as they tried to tie some of the siding in place with some wire. Which was very rusted so it had been damaged for a while.

The second thing I noticed was that the well house was all distorted, either from subsidence or from just being poorly built. I was hoping the same guy didn't build the addition. (That's supposed to be a flat roof.) The well wasn't in there, just the pressure tank.

The water filtration system was in pieces, with one tank leaning up against the trailer.

The air conditioner looked awful too. The lack of maintenance was obvious. Plus the skirting was buckled in some places, leading me to wonder if the trailer had settled and might settle some more. I never did get to look underneath and see if, god forbid, it was still sitting on tires. Or how well it was blocked if they had taken the tires off.

We found the septic tank by following the exposed pipe to the mostly exposed tank.  Which was right next to the fence/property line. That may have been ok decades ago, but not now. The tank has to be 5' from the property line. Plus other setbacks from the foundation, potable water lines and 100' from the water.  I was pretty sure this would be a problem as the county here is not exactly consumer friendly and I doubted they'd approve a permit to repair or replace it where it was, and it was hard to see where I could put it and comply with all the other setbacks without ripping out the structures.  I thought the lid was cracked, it turned out it was just ancient. The septic guy told me they stopped using 3 piece lids in the 70's. (It did fail the septic inspection, by the way. Quite spectacularly. He pulled up one piece of the lid, took one look and walked away. But that's a story for another day.)

When I took these pics I had never seen a septic tank like this so I thought it was broken. Turns out it's just how they did it almost 50 years ago. :-( 

One of the storage sheds was in poor shape, with the floor all rotted out.

The hot water heater was outside, under a kinda weird cover that didn't seem very weatherproof. Unsurprisingly, though the breaker appeared to be on, there was no hot water.

The shed with carport, while mostly in good shape (though FULL of mud dauber wasp nests and surrounded by fire ants) but it was weirdly placed. It was jammed up against the corner of the addition and they cut a section out of the carport roof to make it fit. Just odd. 

The view was not quite as nice as the pics either, they must have been taken after a lot of rain. There wasn't nearly as much water when I looked, and the annual lake drawdown wasn't starting until the 20th of November. 

The other canal was full of lily pads and seemed like skeeter central. :-(

We went inside and then the real fun started.  Pretty much the first thing I noticed was the largest spider I've ever seen anywhere. Ever. Eeeeee......  The second thing I noticed was the gaping hole where they yanked out the fridge, tearing up the vinyl floor and leaving a piece of rotten, water damaged plywood exposed, along with a hole in the wall. This was kinda fortuitous as it exposed how haphazard the wiring was, and the fact that they just stuck a piece of plastic over the hole where the old RV fridge had been vented to the outside. The opening is only 24" wide so there aren't many options in fridges that will fit. 

The pic is blurry since most of the lights in the camper didn't work. The built-in ones are 12v and the 12v system wasn't functioning. There are lots of reasons that could be, my guess was a failed converter.  I never found a breaker box or panel inside the rv to check.

The addition looked great, on the surface.  When you looked more closely at it, problems appeared.  I didn't realize it at first, but the walls in the addition were not wooden beadboard like I thought, but plastic panels made to look like it.  I'd never seen that before. So much for my idea of painting it. :-(  When I looked under the vanity in the bathroom I had a couple more surprises.....first of all, the back of the vanity had disintegrated. Like the fridge, this was kinda fortuitous as it revealed some poor workmanship in the form of another hole in the wall. It also revealed that the walls were a styrofoam sandwich! Plastic panel, plain, uncovered styrofoam, and another plastic panel. No drywall, no foil or other covering on the styrofoam, nothing. I had to wonder how that would fare in a fire. I really wonder what the home inspector would have said about that, though I never got to that point.

The floor in the bath was pretty badly stained too. 

I found the VIN plate showing the year and model of the RV trailer, it still had a license plate on it. I wondered in passing how that worked....was there a title for the RV and a deed for the land or how that worked. I figured that was something for the seller to take care of. (It turned out that I was right to wonder about that......they did need to transfer the title of the RV to me.....and they never got one. I guess when they bought it they didn't do title insurance or a survey or anything and didn't know to get the RV title. And the lady they bought it from had died. This could have been a real headache.)

Even after seeing all these problems, I thought the lot had potential.  I felt that I could use the structures as they were until maybe some day I wanted to build something better.  It would have been nice to kayak around and watch the sunset. I didn't realize the drawdown was going to make the kayaking impossible.

(I did go back after the first drawdown and the water was pretty hard to see from the house. The 'boat ramp' (if you can call it that) was already unusable. When the lake is fully drawn down in December it's probably just a mud flat out there until March. Since I'd only be here in the winter......that was a big negative.)  

I went home and started researching. I found that the sellers paid $25,500 for the property in 2012 and all the improvements had already been done before they bought it. (I was never able to find a single permit for anything.)  I also found that the entire lot was in a flood zone, AE elevation 8 feet. In other words, if I ever wanted to build or put in another manufactured home it would have to be above 8' elevation. In fact, it sounded like if you even wanted to add another room it had to be 8' up. Most of the other lots on the street had a bit of land out of the flood zone where people had built but this lot didn't. So that was a negative about the lot.  After giving it some thought I offered $40,000. I felt that was a fair offer with all the problems, giving the sellers a $15,000 (almost 60%!) profit. Plus I was a cash buyer, so there was no uncertainty about someone getting a mortgage. Though I doubt any bank would finance something like this anyway. So now I just had to wait.

Catching up.

I've been in Florida for a while, and since sitting in Mom's house/yard is not ideal, I've been trying to work out a better solution. I've been getting quotes on building on my lot and also shopping for other property.