The truth of the dictator at city hall and the property inside city limits came out today.

The dictator hasn't been completely truthful.  He is accountable to 2 people above him.  He is not solely responsible to the city council.  That was his claim when I asked about it specifically the first time I met him. 

I have both of those people's phone numbers as of today, one of them the city manager.  Of course and duhh. The city manager is above pretty much everyone but the mayor in any given city.  I will be visiting that person tomorrow if I can at all find this person and meet up with him/her.  

The property was listed as a "rare find" and "inside city limits" but with no restrictions! Oh really?  Liars. 

The property has a small portion of it inside city limits, the rest is county land.  It's pretty strange to think about acquiring a property this is partial city and partial county.  

So what's the deal here?  Well, the deal is that if you want the city's water, electric and sewer, you have to ask for it to be annexed into the city, according to the dictator's version of what the city manager's "policy" is.  I can think of a number of reasons why you wouldn't want to voluntarily subject yourself to the city, the other part of the Little Dictator's engagement today was proof of that.

 He told me that one of the properties I bought at auction would have to have a pier and beam structure with shingle roof or a brick structure put on it with minimum 1,100 square feet.  Oh my, isn't he so wonderful to concede that? That street has old  - and I mean old - mobile homes on it. OLD site built homes. One of them is rotting out.  It has a mansion on it, yes, down the road a ways and completely fenced in.  There are a few nice, regular houses. It's a total mix.  But this dude thinks I should dump a hundred grand into a housing project.

I'll tell you what, if i wanted to do that? It would be a small apartment complex or a duplex, triplex, or quad.  

I haven't given up on doing with that property, but I have minimal hopes of just putting a small house on it and renting it out.  They don't want to deal with it, with no particularly good reasons as to why.   

Back to the other property.  I am going to try to find out if there is county electric and water available.  There are numerous homes on the other side of the street, where are they getting their water and electric from? Not the city, or if they are, it's not because of some ridiculous mandate that the city gets to take it over with governmental authority.  

Look, I don't even know if  I can get the financing for this property. But you have to do the homework first.  

Tomorrow - yet another day off work - I will be attempting to find out if there is rural water available with rural electric. 

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So, I went out and got the aerator machine yesterday.  It didn't take long, just a bit over an hour to pop holes all over the yard.  It did, however, kick my @$$.  It's a machine that has a motor and self drive simply by turning the spindle the tines are on - but just trying turning that thing!

You either have to lift the machine up or run around like a madman in a half circle trying to get it to line up with where you left off.  So it rained last night, I have no idea if the seeds got washed away - again - or if they are buried in the dirt.

Back to the property.  
For I went out and walked around part of it and up and down the streets next to it.  Power lines are running right through it, the city has no control over that.  The city doesn't generate power anyway. What they have control of is water sewer - if there is sewer out there I couldn't find anything.  But there is water running on the other side of the highway, but another water utility running down the side street.  I found a map and that appears to be under the control of a neighboring, much smaller city.  Whether they want to annex to provide services? I have no clue, tried calling them and got a recorded message and a "mailbox is full" message. 

The property has an old, caved in house on it.  Was rather surprised to find that thing there. It's so caved in there is no telling about whether there were utilities going to it.  One would assume yes, but assumptions are bad things sometimes, especially when considering putting my name on the line for 100k and giving a sizeable down payment to back it up.

One one of the corners of it, there are actually very small, separate properties, all with mobile homes on them.  Another situation where whatever entity has control of the land through the government would have a hard time coming back to me and telling me that the "only thing" I can put on there is what they dictate and take it or leave it.  

I also talked to the city manager.  I can make no guarantees, he said, but it would certainly be on the favorable side.  he talked about a study the city had done quite a while back where they wanted an RV park near downtown.  He said that would go favorable on your project.  Because not only would I have to have the property annexed, if I had to go that route, I would also have to get new zoning on it.  I have yet to find out whether the majority of the property is in county land or in the next city over's jurisdiction.  

This whole thing has been a giant learning curve for me. Whether I get this property or not, I am finding that I have to learn about more and more contacts to get necessary information before you even think about going to the bank and talking about a loan.  The property is way over-priced, but, i found out today going through the tax roles, it's owned by an heir of the deceased that originally owned it.  The description reads " motivated seller".  Well that's interesting, because I don't reckon that property is worth more than 3 grand per acres.  That puts it around 100k. They want - I dont' remember exactly, 138k I think it was.  

Whatever the case, I am putting any more fact finding missions on hold for a bit today and just sit back and think about all of this.  For even if I could get this property, I would likely be short on the funds/cash to be able to develop it.  Utility access along will cost in the thousands or even tens of thousands range.  That's the biggest drawback to any of these properties that don't have city sewer and water.  Or a coop.  Or a rural utility.  

Day 2 of 2 full days off of work. It's more like 3 since I only worked part of the morning on sunday, but the company will call that a day that I worked anyway. Full expect to get sent out tomorrow, dunno where.  I need a good run to shore up the Oklahoma run.  

With that, I have house work things to do and I'm getting offa here.

G'day.