Lot Visits
Sun, Dec 3, 2017We stayed the weekend at my Dad’s cabin. He has a couple feet of snow already. My brother and I have been helping rebuild his place for the last year and a half. His lot is in a floodplain, and the last flood had done some pretty bad damage. The new build is on higher stilts and should be pretty well protected. A lot of the interior isn’t finished out yet (no carpet or wall finishes), but it’s insulated and the bathroom works.
We had an appointment with Jon (real-estate agent) to head out and view about five lots in two Lake Cle Elum communities: Anna Bell and Morgan Creek. Both of these communities were very nice and had some pretty extravagant houses. In fact, Morgan Creek had an electric gate, which seemed a bit over the top, but the area was known to be a weekender community and having a little more protection during the week wasn’t a bad idea.
I am glad Jon decided to drive because the roads up to these communities is steep and there was a lot of snow and ice; something we would have to give a lot of thought to before deciding to buy.
Jon took us to Morgan Creek first to show us the lot he had his eye on for us. We called it the Lincoln lot, which was the first name of the current owner, and it sounded cool. From pictures and on paper, we didn’t like it much. It was smaller than the others we were looking at, and it was a fair bit more expensive too. However, the current owner had the septic designed and approved, water and power were already brought on the lot, he had done a fair bit of excavation to establish a build pad on the hill side, and had blueprints drafted and stamped by an engineer. We weren’t enthusiastic about the floor plan, but figured we could change the floor plan to our suiting, and keep the outer footprint to leverage his excavation work.
The Lincoln Lot sat at the very top of Morgan Creek. There was one cabin perched a little further up the hill behind it. The lot ran long, parallel to the ridge and lake. It was 3 acres and the build site sat just under half way into the lot. The prior owner had cleared most of the first half of the lot (within reason, there were still lots of trees), but the second half was untouched and heavily wooded. What caught our eye right away was from the lot you could not see a single neighbor. The cabin behind us sat in such a way that we could not see it over the steep slope that marks the boundary of the lot. The one to the side and the one in front were also out of view.
The lot had an awesome view of the north end of the lake, as well as the mountain ridges that border the west side of the lake. The lot had a seemingly level build pad, as well as a lower terrace that was fairly level which would be good for fires, a picnic table, etc.
We walked a bit of the lot and snapped a few pictures of the view so we could reference later. Onto the next lot!
We only spent a few minutes looking at the remaining lots in Morgan Creek. We were able to pass on these pretty quickly because they were either too exposed to neighbors, or the terrain would make building too difficult. One had a very small building pad, but the others had nothing. We knew that the earth work could pose a large unknown risk and wanted to stay away from having to do too much of it.
While we were looking at these lots, a few neighbors were on a walk and stopped to chat. We learned that the roads remain plowed (with a 3-6” snowpack) throughout the year, but sometimes a heavy snow can take a few days to get someone out to clear it. The HOA dues were pretty low, and mostly go towards the snow plow services in the winter.
We headed out to checkout a pair of lots at Anna Bell. We got pretty close to the lots before we had to park and walk the rest of the way. The roads here weren’t plowed, and the last stretch of road was just dirt and gravel, unlike the asphalt at Morgan Creek.
We hiked up a fairly steep road, which transitioned into the driveway at some point. The two lots sat on top of each other and seemed to curve back on each other, like a helix. They had a nice view of the of the lake, but you could see a number of neighbor homes and were fairly exposed. We wanted some privacy, but these lots were interesting to us because we could purchase both together for about the price of the Lincoln Lot. This would solve one complexity that my brother and I had not talked too much about yet: what if one wishes to sell in the future?
The trip was well worth the time. It confirmed for us we were looking in the right area. We weren’t going to find better views anywhere nearby, and those views were worth increasing the budget. And now we had narrowed our search down to just two lots: the Lincoln Lot and the Anna Bell twin lots. There was a lot to consider, including how accessible these lots would be in the winter, which was an important factor to us, and how well we could build what we wanted.
Jon emailed us the CC&Rs (HOA rules) for both. The two communities are basically managed by the same HOA, so the CC&Rs were the same. In them, we had our first hurdle: any structure had to be at least 1,500 square feet, and no temporary structures would be allowed. We also only had 14 months to complete construction once we started (at least from outside appearances).
I had been playing with this idea of getting an alpine yurt and using that while we built our cabins. We would build the cabins over the course of maybe 5 years. I wanted to do all the construction myself, and given a full-time job, a young kid, and another on the way, that would take time. But if we ended up purchasing in one of these communities, we’d have to build one big cabin, there would be no yurt in the meantime, and we’d have to get done pretty quick. But that view…
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