Thursday, October 28, 2010

Halloween town

WELCOME to Cruzin2some!  Thanks for becoming a Follower, I've been reading along on your blog, too.  Lately you have had questions that I'm definitely going to have in a year or so!  Hope you enjoy coming along for the ride!

Halloween Town

So... about the Boulder Creek property.  I made some phone calls yesterday - first to the county assessor.  They said the property is still in my name, I still don't owe any taxes, and it is still not buildable.  I'd need an acre, and it's 1/5 of an acre.  I told her about seeing the house on the Google Earth map and she said the satellites are so far up, they are often distorted when you are looking at specific properties. She said to call the planning department about parking my RV on the property.

So I called the planning department.  She said technically I am not allowed to park there.  I can only park an RV on property that has a building on it.  But she did say they are a complaint driven department.  If I parked there and no one complained, I'd be okay.  If someone complains, I'd have to move.  Good to know.

I told her about thinking someone put a house on the land, and out of curiosity she looked it up on their satellite program and this is what it showed (I went on their website and could pull it up, too): 

 Do you think the satellites could be off that much?

The blue outline is the property - see the house in the upper left corner?  There is actually another in the lower right corner, too.  That makes me think it might be off a little.  The woman at the zoning planning department said there have been no permits pulled for the property, so if there is something on it, it is definitely not legal.

I then called a Realtor I talked to in August 1994 when I was going to sell it (if it was worth selling), and she is still with the same real estate office.  There is a house in foreclosure next to my lot, and I wondered if it had anything to do with the structure that seems to be on my lot.  She took the information, did some checking and called me back. She said she gave both APNs to a local title company, and they are going to check on it.  She will call me back with information by Friday, or early next week.  Just in case someone had their lot lines wrong.  She asked me exactly where the lot was, and I gave her the "Beer Pub" location right next to me, and I'm hoping she will actually drive out and see for herself.  The lot is 4.5 miles from the town of Boulder Creek, so it would only take a few minutes.  It would be nice to have an "eyes on" opinion.

I really want to see the property, but it's an eight hour drive each way, and I don't know if I want to make such a long drive over a weekend.  I think I'm going to let the experts do their research, and see what they say.  If there is a problem, I'll go next weekend, maybe take off Monday so it will be a Friday through Sunday trip with Monday to recover. If it looks like everything is okay, I'll probably wait until I go up to Vacaville again to visit my daughter and her family, and we can take a day trip to see it then, walk around Boulder Creek and have lunch there.

After I wrote the above, I pulled up my condo address in Google Earth.  And you know what?  It has me two blocks over from my street.  Interesting...  Maybe it really is off that much. 

Maybe this is all much ado about nothing.  If so, at least I learned I can park my RV on the lot as long as no one complains.  I'm going to have to knock on some doors when I go up there and make some friends. : )

Boooooooo!

PUZZLE:   Here is a puzzle I have always liked.  It was in the San Francisco Chronicle when I was in high school, and I cut it out and saved it for years (and years and years).

Three people check into a hotel. They pay $30 to the manager and go to their room. The manager finds out that the room rate is $25 and gives the bellboy $5 to return to the guests. On the way to the room the bellboy reasons that $5 would be difficult to split among three people so he pockets $2 and gives $1 to each person. Now each person paid $10 and got back $1. So they paid $9 each, totaling $27. The bellboy has another $2, adding up to $29.

Where is the remaining dollar?  I'll have the answer tomorrow.

From me and Katie, have a great Thursday, everyone! : )

7 comments:

  1. I'm glad you checked and have an agent close enough to be able to check it out personally.

    My son-in-law's mother has a house next to a vacant house. She began noticing a lot of people coming and going next door, and eventually called the owner who said he had not rented it. The "squatters/tenants" insisted they were paying rent for it. The owner had them evicted, but it's a lot of trouble, especially if someone erected a structure on your property.

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  2. As someone who works with imagery and GIS a lot, I would say that red boundary is a projection issue and the actual line of your property is on the road. Maps can get offset just about this much by "projection" problems, which is too complex for me to explain here. I think you are probably ok.

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  3. If someone built a house on your property, maybe you could sell your property to them for $100,000 or so!

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  4. I remember that brainteaser from high school too! How funny. But I sure don't remember the answer. Guess I'll find out tomorrow!

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  5. Twisted wordings, thus caused confusions!

    Each paid $9, so they paid a total of $9x3=$27 out, the manager holds $25, the bellboy holds $2, there's no missing dollar!

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  6. Hope you get your land all cleared up and hopefully it will make a good place to park your RV.

    Thank you so much for the brain games and tests. I am really enjoying them. I have already done quite a few of them, but there are some new, so added them to my favorites.

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  7. Thanks for sharing the info about your lot. I'm hoping the house is on your lot - maybe you'll either own a house or the house owners will have to pay you a bundle of money for your lot.

    When a builder built a house we previously owned, he apparently put it too far over on one side of the lot and he had to either start over or buy several feet of land from the neighbor next door - he bought the land.

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