Finding land in Northern California

My wife, Lena, and I began this journey in December of 2012.  I set out to convince her that we should build a prefabricated vacation house in the country.  I had been researching and dreaming for years, but she was much slower to warm up to the idea.

We found a real estate agent pretty early in our search.  He was super-helpful in learning what went into building in Marin and Sonoma counties.  I highly recommend talking with Stephen Pringle if you are looking to buy in Marin.  More about Stephen in future posts.

Lena and I spent every spare weekend driving around the Bay Area and somewhat beyond looking for that perfect undeveloped parcel.  We searched from Mendocino County to Santa Cruz County and dragged our 4-year old son around for most of the road trips.  We were looking for a parcel with privacy -- lots of land or within a reasonable distance to open space for hiking.  We love the scrubby oaks of Northern California and found our first likely candidate in the Mayacamas Mountains in Cloverdale.  Lena was sold on the idea at that moment.

Perfectly quiet, perfect views, perfect size -- everything was perfect except the road getting to the parcel.  It was 25 minutes of treacherously windy and narrow, single-lane driving.  It was hard to imagine a semi-truck carrying a 60 foot house module making its way on that road, let alone one of us late at night.  We kept looking.

Our original search zone

In fact, we saw lots of nice properties but many of them were either out of our price range or geographic range.  We discovered after many 7-hour round trips that proximity to San Francisco was very important.  We made one other offer on a parcel in Lagunitas, but were not able to negotiate with the seller, so we kept looking.  Occasionally I would get discouraged and need to take a break from searching.  Sometimes Lena and I would disagree about a specific location and that was not always easy.

In the end we mostly shared a vision of what that ideal land would look like.  We settled on the Sonoma Valley and West Marin as targets for our search.  We loosened some criteria and tightened others and we kept looking.

Our refined search zone

The "One"

It had been a number of weeks since we had gone out looking.  Driving to "look at properties" had long lost its appeal to our son and so we would try to schedule other activities for him while we searched.  We drove out on our usual way across the Golden Gate Bridge with at least three possible destinations in mind.  The first time we looked for that 6-acre lot in Point Reyes we couldn't even find it.  Google maps led us to an empty field with no visible address nor for sale signs to be seen.  This was not unusual when searching for vacant lots, and so we looked around enough to know that the area was a possibility and moved on.

Stephen got the information from the listing agent and we went out shortly thereafter to meet her on the site.  She took us down a private drive and out to what was the prettiest little piece of land we have seen since we began looking more than a year and a half ago.  It has gently sloping land with a ravine on one side and a seasonal creek at the bottom.  It faces a partial view of the Nicasio Ridge and even a glimpse of the town of Point Reyes Station through the trees.  Best of all, much of it borders federal parkland.

Looking Northeast through the oaks and bay laurels

We had learned that there was much more to a parcel than the view, however.  Developing unincorporated land can be quite difficult.  There's soil composition for drainage and septic systems, there's connecting water and electric supply, there's building envelopes and zoning restrictions, and there's a whole variety of environmental restrictions.  Part of the reason we were originally drawn to the property was that the listing stated that much of the preparation and surveying had already been done by the owner.  There was municipal water on the site.  There was conduit already run underground for the electrical, and "perc" tests had already been performed to guarantee the quality of the soils for the septic system.  This was a pretty big selling point -- it's a bit surprising that this lot had been on the market for well over a year.

We made an offer knowing that we would still have time to do our due diligence within the escrow period and then waited for a response.  Our offer was below asking, but fair.  There was an adjoining lot that had sold four years prior and that gave us an excellent "apples-to-apples" comparison.  I had briefly met the owner during one of my visits to the land and so I made a personal appeal to him in a letter explaining how much I appreciated his experience and insight about the geology, plant and wildlife on the property; also what we loved about it.

Within a day we had our reply.  He had accepted our offer with a few (mostly administrative) clarifications.  We promptly paid a 1% deposit and we had ratified the contract and entered the escrow period.

At this point uncertainty takes over.  Holy shit, we're about to spend how much money?  Why was the seller so quick to accept our offer?  Is there something we don't know?  Are we going to regret this decision?  As much as I wanted to be excited about our pending purchase it's hard not to dwell on the fact that we will soon be depleting our savings and taking on more debt and risk on top of it.

Yesterday I returned to the parcel to meet some specialists and the excitement returned.  Everyone who sees it remarks on what a rare and beautiful find that piece of land is.  The gentle smells of coastal air and the peaceful sounds of dozens of bird varieties relax me the moment I step out of the car.

Over the coming months (and possibly years) I'll be updating this record of our house building experience.  I'll cover the closing process, what it's like to work with the home manufacturer, the permitting process in Marin, finding and working with contractors, and anything else that seems relevant.