sounds like you are nearing the home stretch in the permist process. though I don't know about LA county being the worst. here in santa cruz county the permit process usually takes a year. yes, 365 days or more. it's not uncommon for building permit to take 18 months. did I mention we're moving? we've given up on building here. looks like we're heading to austin

I called the friendly folks at travis county (austin) planning and permits a few days ago. happy guy who answered the phone said "THE GOOD NEWS IS THAT WE'RE CHEAP AND WE'RE EASY!!" he spoke in a loud voice that was not unlike a game show host or radio personality. think he said blg permit would be a/b $50 and take a week.

paul schuster

Yes, you're right. Santa Cruz is hard and Malibu and Mt. Washington are dificult to permit too.

Speaking of Santa Cruz, our manufacturer, Irontown Homes, is going through permitting for a home is Los Gatos and they have told me that it's been really, very difficult to get that one through. I would love to live in Los Gatos or any of the above mentioned areas; maybe they're worth the wait.

If I had my choice I would have not built in Southern California at all; I really dislike the culture of vanity and materialism here. I would have probably chose Austin or Seattle (Or I would settle for Santa Cruz). That sounds terrific; $50 for permitting, wow!

well, a permit in Austin will be a couple of hundred bucks, not $50, but in Travis county it might be that cheap. The county is amazingly easy to deal with. Everyone down there is REALLY nice and downright helpful. I think it is the whole "this is Texas, and it's your property to do with what you please" mentality, and the fact that in the county they are probably just ahppy that you cam in and bothered to pull a permit anyway...

Mark

Heavy sigh. I can't remember if Sara has given a breakdown of her permit costs, but reading about Texas fees makes me despair of the whole idea of building in California. Just for your amusement, here is an estimate for fees that apply to our half-acre lot in unincorporated Sonoma county (where, I have been told, it is also not uncommon to need a year for all approvals):

Single Family Dwelling (3000 S.F. + 400 S.F. GARAGE) Plancheck(1) $ 2,502.00 Building Permit(2) 4,833.00 Park Fees(3) 2,266.00 Sewer/Sanitation Connect(4) 2,000.00 to $ 9,058.00 Driveway Encroachment(5) 0.00 to 855.00 Water Connect(6) 4,000.00 to 10,000.00 Traffic Mitigation(7) 5,138.00 to 10,983.00 School Mitigation(8) 4,320.00 to 10,410.00

Total: $25,059.00 to $ 50,907.00!!

On top of that, the lot is not currently buildable, and likely won't be until late next summer. The property owners approved a special assessment district to install public water and sewer in Sept 2001, and we have been paying for the bonds since then, but the project has been held up by the CEQA (Cal. Environmental Quality Act) process ever since. We are now hopefully past that, and the county can finally finish designing the project and begin construction.

Getting all required permits = $50K Special assessment district bond = $40K Jump through CEQA hoops = 5 years Building a home in Northern California = NOT priceless!

But at least you get to live in a Blue State right? And your public schools aren't in a total state of disrepair. That must be worth something.

Oh, wait

you're serious.

Yeah, parts of California

including ours -- certainly are blue. That's not necessarily a great thing, though, when taken to extreme as it often is hereabouts. I would sooner live with an excess of liberality than overbearing conservatism, however, so I guess it could be worse.

On the topic of schools: don't get me started. California ranks 44th among the states in K-12 per-pupil educational spending (below TX and well below the national average). Our kindergartner doesn't go to the school near our current house because we would sooner he not join a gang just yet. Instead, he attends a school in a "better" district near the site of the new house. A district which is $1.5M short on next year's budget and as a consequence will be cutting 40 teacher positions, including all of the librarians. This is a result of the famous Prop 13

a red state idea if ever there was one. A $97 parcel tax to avert the cuts required a 2/3 majority to pass and failed last month by 26 votes out of 10,000 cast.

However, you are correct in one respect

the building is pretty new and not in disrepair ;^)

Hmm, I didn't add the bold or funky line breaks to my last message, so I have no idea how they got there. I also have never used this forum software package before and can't figure out how to edit my posts. Sorry about that.

it's true that I called travis county and not austin city. since those eanes district schools have such high marks we've chosen that direction.

and the quality of those schools is what drives my wife to do the move. the SAT scores from those schools are higher, the $ per pupil spent is higher and student/teacher ratio is better. it's really apples/oranges when comparing texas schools to california. the funding method is different. forgive me if I have this wrong, but from my memory of when I lived in park cities (dallas) the school districts are funded by LOCAL property taxes. so if you buy a nice home in an area of nice homes the schools there are usually well funded and have high marks. not really fair for the folks living in armpit, tx where they'd jump at a chance to sell the land at $3k an acre.

I'm happy with the schools here in santa cruz. but the eanes district schools are markedly better. as of today, we're considering to offer on a lot in westlake.

and back to those permits. I think the cost of santa cruz permit process was similr to that mentioned above, around $50k

our budget to build here was approaching $900k. the bank would've let us do it. but we're not sure we wanted that much debt stress. maybe worth a the cost of mosquitoes, fire ants and a need for air conditioning.

OK, I need to get back to my house projects. we plan to have it listed may 1st or so.

paul schuster

I'm no expert, but your 900k budget will probably go a very long way in Travis County as compared to Santa Cruz. You may have to deal with the skeeters and some serioius humidity, but I think you'll find the overall lifestyle of Austin is similar to Santa Cruz, and you'll be saving lots of money to boot. Enjoy the Tex-Mex and the music - Austin is the best place to be in this state.

first of all I'd like to appologize to sara for somehow turning her blog into my personal tx/ca build forum :-)

I'm confident you will have a beautiful end product and have no regrets. one thing seems to be certain here, CA RE appreciates fast. around here we've seen upwards of 20% annually. that is a/b $100k a yr. my wife has noted that the home makes $ faster than she can. but you only get at that equity $ if you sell and move. we want to find a place where we can stay for the next 15 yrs while the kids are in school.

if I did have the $ to build and stay here in santa cruz, I would. but I don't. I'd mentioned the bank surely would lend us the $. but I'm just not comofortable living w/ that much debt. if there were any income hiccup at all, we'd quickly have to sell. so we'll not have $900k to build in austin. it's very likely we'll have a $500k budget, but again half of that will go towards land.

reading this and all the other blogs has been a great inspiration for us. dewll also shares some guilt for my motivation to build the dream home. I'd like to thank all the live modern bloggers for their content. I check this page more than just a few times a day. really looking fwd to those pics from irontown and to see this permit process be part of the past.

paul schuster