Negotiations

I haven't written for a while, but not so much has been happening on the home ownership/straw bale building front... until yesterday.

We met with the owner of the property I shared with you some posts back.Generally, the situation is such that she is in some financial trouble and needs the money from the sale of some or all of her property. Great for us, we negotiated the land at a bargain 276zł/sqm (compare that to the 500zł/sqm the neighbouring properties are going for!!) We also negotiated that the 760sqm on offer be extended to 800sqm, as this is the minimum council requirement for residential development. We had a good old time with a 30 metre long tape measure, negotiating how close to the existing building our property would reach and getting to visualize what will sometime soon be ours. Me, of course, in my "power suit" (I joke, but I was expecting negotiations over tea in her living room and not outdoors in the wind) and 7cm heels.

Here is an outline of what's going on with the property:

Basically, what you can see here is the current property (the big red box), a section of land already subdivided (smaller red box towards the front, brother of the owner of the larger property), green lines marking where our property lines will be, an access rode (marked in cyan, which will need to be extended to the second green line) some trees and neighbouring buildings. You've also got the longitude and latitude there, so you can check it out on google earth!

Now the long and winding road (thank you, Mr Lennon) begins.

Firstly, the owner needs to get a surveyor to mark out on council maps pretty much what I have done above with the green lines. Then the owner needs to go to the bank and provide me with their declaration that they will and can remove this piece of the property from the mortgage agreement she has with them. Finally by the end of the week, I expect, we will go to the notary, set out how we will go forward and make a down payment.

Then, the owner will apply to the council for the land to be divided as outlined by the surveyor, meanwhile she will also apply to council for a building permit for a small residential property towards the front of the land (front being nearest the street, next to her brother's house), as she won't be able to develop this land after subdivision - she will no longer have the required minimum 800sqm.

I don't know what else will need to be done. I hope that once we have architectural designs, which might be in the next 2 months, so before the subdivision and ownership procedures are finalized, the owner will apply  for a building permit for us, so it gets approved before the land is ours, and we can move onto the site as soon as its ours. It takes about a month to get the permit, so it would be nice to have when we get the property, rather than having to wait before we start developing our land.

So that's the long and incomplete version. For now we wait to sign notary papers, in the meantime, both our super friendly real estate agent and ourselves will be making notes of what should be included in this agreement.

Meanwhile, I've also found another potential source for straw bales. Early last year we found a farmer who could sell us bales from this years' harvest at 4zł a piece, and that's still current (note to self, should be calling him some day soon) but my husband's cousins fiance's parents also have a few hundred bales, very dry, from about 2 years ago, so these would be preferable. Also need to be calling him sometime soon to work out how many bales, what size, how tight they are and how much they might want for the bales (hoping for mates rates!)

Purchases

Our first home purchase has been made, and somewhat unfortunately, it was not land.

This may seem like a crazy and spontaneous purchase, but the truth is that Husband and I decided on two pieces of interest that we'd like to have in the house:
one, stained-glass or otherwise antique church window,
two, antique cast iron spiral staircase.
These were supposed to add interest and be our only splurges.

We came up with the window idea after visiting friends of ours in Australia. They have a beautiful home in Melbourne and their open living/dining area features very tall and very colorful church windows, which as I understand were also salvaged for the house build. They also had smaller church windows in another part of the house.

Can't remember where the idea for stairs came from, though.

Well, the first purchase, a window, has been done. A little different to what our friends have, it's etched, rather than stained, and considerably smaller. Both are attributes, our copy is original :P That is to say that we copied the concept but the final outcome won't be similar at all. Plus our house probably won't be large enough to accommodate multiple church windows, and we'll probably be limited to placing them in an interior dividing wall, as it probably doesn't have good thermal properties.

The best thing is that the purchase wasn't really a splurge, as we'd prepared for. There wasn't much interest in the eBay piece, we got it for only AU$182.62. It'll probably cost us that again to ship it to Poland, if not more, and there is the stress of getting it here in one piece, but fingers are crossed.

Now I'm looking at a spiral staircase and perhaps by the week's end I'll have the other purchase done, too. Then we get the land and build the house to put them in! Certainly all other purchases will be purely practical, as these are the only predicted unnecessary purchases.