Just as we were about to sign the lease on our rental, believing ourselves to be in the final stages of plans and loan approval, we hit a road-bump. The appraised value of the finished home came in way lower than we expected, because the appraiser quite literally could not compute the value of the Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) space. This is the mother-in-law suite, roughly 700 sq ft of living space, accessible only from an external door in keeping with Hermosa City code. The State of California wants as many ADUs as possible to be built. The Coastal Commission likes ADUs in areas where there’s a need for more housing, like Hermosa. And Hermosa Beach City is fully in favor too. But the slow pokes in the world of real estate appraisers acts as if they are a crazy fiction of an idea. The appraiser’s notes said ‘ADU is not usual so appraised at zero square foot’. i.e. ‘I’ve never seen one of these before so I’m going to act as if it does not exist.’
We appealed and got a higher valuation but the build will still have more of our money and less of the bank’s poured into it. Which triggered a couple of weeks of heavy debates on questions like ‘do we really want to do this?’ ‘how big a house do we need?’ ‘what kind of life do we want to live’ and ‘where will we be in 20 years’ time?’.
Of course we decided that we do want to build this house, which is just the right size for us, and hopefully where we will be living in 20 years time. And having decided that, we don’t want any further delay. We’ve got the loan sorted, and we’ve found a new – closer, less expensive – rental, and the mover is booked.
All we need is our plans approved. Therein lies another bump in the road. Our plans have been in the final stages of approval for weeks now. The latest niggle is that if you are building three stories you need a licensed architect, not a building designer like we used. We think we are building two stories with a covered roof deck, and we took the rooftop powder room out of the plans to prove it. Now we need the city to agree with us so we can move on. You’d think there’d be a simple definition of a storey but apparently not – so I guess our very floorplans and elevations are having existential angst now. What kind of house is this?
Once we’ve over these wobbles - hopefully in a week or two – we will start the demolition process. Mind you, I’ve been saying ‘hopefully in a week or two’ since early August. So we’re not holding our breath.
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