New House Update #3

See updates #1 and #2 and the back story here.

For those of you wondering what is going on with our new house, the answer is, not a whole lot unfortunately. We have STILL not gotten a permit yet. Amazingly. Everyone we talk to say this is the longest permitting process that they have ever seen. Yay us! Essentially we are being held up on one issue: trees. The city of Seattle has some pretty strict rules about when they allow trees to be removed from a piece of property. I had no idea how strict until we started reading about cases (many cases) where entire buildings had to be reconfigured or scrapped entirely, as a result of a tree on the property that the city would not allow to be removed for construction. This is especially true if the tree is large (I believe the trunk has to measure 30" in diameter at chest height), and is considered an "exceptional tree."

Lucky us, we have 3 "exceptional trees" on our lot (in addition to many other smaller and less valuable trees). Of course we applied to have them removed as an exception to the rule, but that request was shot down pretty much immediately. So then our next option was to hire an arborist to go over every tree on the lot with a fine tooth comb and give the city an official  recommendation as to whether each of the trees on the property should stay or go. Initially the city didn't want any of the trees to go. See, when you look at the paper site plan, it looks like there is a veritable forest of valuable trees on the lot. So to a reviewer from the city, I could see why they might be horrified at the thought of cutting down such a mass of "valuable" vegetation. However, its not until you go to the lot and see that those so called "valuable" trees are really just a bunch of snags, junky overgrown shrubs and scraggly trees in terrible condition. Anyone who saw the lot would I'm sure, agree that it needs to be cleared to make room for not only the house, but for us to plant healthy trees in their place. So we hired this arborist to do just that, and he did give the recommendation that all of the junky trees/shrubs be removed.

Unfortunately that "exceptional tree" rule remained and no matter what, the 3 large trees on the lot were going to have to stay, simply because of their size. This was fine in the case of two of the trees. They were more or less out of the way and though we'd prefer them to be taken out, it wasn't going to interfere with construction to leave them there. That was not the case with the 3rd tree however. That tree is located exactly where the southeast corner of the house foundation is supposed to be. Since the city has already said that they will not allow us to make an exception to the rule which would allow us to cut the tree down (and especially since the arborist could find nothing wrong with it that would justify cutting it down), the builder decided that he would see if we could move the house a few yards to the west of the lot, to get the foundation further away from that tree.

In order to see if this plan would work, we first had to send the entire site plan back to the architect, to have the whole thing revised (move the house on the plan). That alone took several weeks. Then once we got that plan back, we had to give it to the a soils engineer, to update the water runoff and retention plan. Finally we gave the new plan to the arborist to see if moving the house would impact the other exceptional trees. It turned out that when the house was in the original position, only one tree was impacted, whereas when the house was moved, now two of the exceptional trees would be potentially impacted. So the final recommendation from the arborist was that we should minimize the impact to the exceptional trees, by just keeping the house in the original position and cutting down the one tree. So w are hoping that having this professional recommendation will carry more weight with the city reviewer and they will allow us to just keep the house in the original location and remove the first tree.

Of course, this might be a pie in the sky wish. The city can always come back and say that they will not allow any tree to be removed, and they will not allow any tree to be compromised either, so we need to either move the entire house to the back yard, or we will need to choose a different house floor plan entirely. In that case, we would need to begin the entire permitting process from the beginning again, which would mean another 4-5 months of waiting and thousands more dollars in fees. Ugh! This is obviously the worst case scenario and I am hoping it doesn't come to this, but I am trying to prepare myself for any eventuality so that we are not blindsided.

Our builder informed us that the final revision to the plans had been given to the city as of yesterday, so we are hoping to hear what the final word is in the next two weeks or so. We have spent two months now dealing with this tree situation alone (something that none of us including the builder had thought would even be an issue), so I am anxious to get some resolution on this issue, one way or the other. I am just hoping that this is the final hurdle and whether we have to move the house or not, we will get the permit finally. At this point we are looking at a potential move in date of sometime in March or April 2015. Pray that we get good news here soon! This has been the most ridiculous process I have ever been through in my life, even more so than the short sale process (and that was a doozy in and of itself). I just pray that our more than a year of set back after set back is finally near its conclusion! I will update with any news that we get!



***Update as of August 29th ***

We just received word that the city is going to approve the removal of the tree, and will allow us to keep the house in the original location on the property! This is the best possible scenario that I could have ever hoped for! Of course, I am deeply suspicious of this news and will only really believe it when I see it happen. But at least according to our builder, we just have some last minute paperwork to update and resubmit and we should (with any luck) have our permits by the end of September or hopefully in the next couple of weeks. So we could potentially have the trees removed and the house knocked down by the end of September or beginning of October! My fingers are crossed that our luck is starting to change and we can get this party started at last!