Planning Small in the City

Tomorrow is another milestone. Only a month into working with Kate, my architecture student, and the site plans are all done and ready to be submitted to the City of Minneapolis CPED, Community Planning and Economic Development, (more information about CPED and the Vacant Lot Recycling program can be found here). The process has been smooth but tedious. In order to submit an offer you have to give the city a lot of information. Being a first time homebuilder, it takes a lot of research and time to pull the information together. You have to submit a budget, which includes contingency funds. Under the budget also falls things like utilities costs (i.e. tapping into a new sewer line, connecting to city power, which is free so long as it is less than 100' , architect and design fees, real estate taxes, insurance, legal fees, and so much more). The only mandatory numbers you have to include are the Market Value of the home and information about how you will pay for the development. The land cost is $3800. What's tricky is the Market Value, I assessed the Market Value myself, I looked at comparable properties (2br/2ba homes in the neighborhood) and looked also at square footage, I then found that the cost/sq. ft. ranged between $90/$130 dollars in the area so used that number to create a market value for the house. I know I should have gotten a realtor to do these numbers for me but likely they would have come up with the same since there are virtually no houses under 800 sq. ft. in this neighborhood any longer (more about that in another post). This fact aside, I chose this lot in particular because the previous home on this site was only 567 sq. ft. I am hoping that that will factor into my case but who knows.

Moving slowly but steadily. We'll see what comes.