Department of Planning and Development

Had a very fruitful meeting with John Rodman, AICP, Planning Administrator at the Department of Planning and Development at the City of Washington Municipality Building. I will try to summarize some of the things I learned. The city of Washington creates zoning and planning regulations for itself and a 3 mile radius outside of city limits, but the surrounding counties have NO ZONING which has its own positives and negatives that I will get to in a minute. The only real restrictions to purchasing land in the outside county is if the Health Department will issue a septic tank permit based on the water drainage efficiency of the soil on your property, and secondly if that land is within the flood zone, which means there is a mandatory statute to purchase flood insurance.
Here's a tid bit of information - %75 of the City of Washington is within the flood zone and during Hurricane Floyd the storm surge got to 9 ft 6 inches. A deterrent I keep feeling in my investigations to this region is that the soil is largely made up of sand and clay, no bedrock, and there is a lot of marsh land. I don't like the ramifications of this given the long term environmental crisis seemingly imminent. But this only leads me to consider the suggestion of my good friend Derek to go visit an environmental scientist at UNC, which would be a fun trip anyways, and there would be babes on campus. Another deterrent to this region is that I have noticed an overwhelming absence of babes, but maybe that is because I live in NYC and it is the wintertime here, although today it is 75 degrees and sunny, with a nice breeze off of the water!
Anyways, the interesting thing about the no zoning in the surrounding counties is that you can do whatever the hell you want with your land, run a business, build a tower to the moon, put up any old crazy church which many folks seem to do - the bad part about this is exactly that, your neighbor can do whatever the hell they want too - run a general store, a hog or chicken farm, a auto shop, and many of them do. So you would need to buy sufficient acreage to buffer yourself from your neighbor...

I saw this piece of land yesterday afternoon. It is about 34 acres of former cotton field. In fact there is still alot of cotton plants just sort of wallowing in decrepitude, their little white cotton plumes still in rows running down the plot. It strikes me that in my mind, 34 acres seems like alot, but out here in farm country, where you are surrounded by endless expanses of land, it seems rather underwhelming. In any case this is not it, but I do like that the price per acre is under 3k.

Environmental Awareness

I intend on this being not only a really fun project but a good investment. It is therefore necessary to be mindful of the potential ramifications of rising sea levels not only on potential water front property but also ground water, irrigation, communities, etc. There are some interesting articles on the net if you google 'climate change water level estimates North Carolina'

www.HouseAuctionCompany.com

I plan on attending an auction for this land on Friday , February 20th at 1:00 pm. I don't think this is a desirable option necessarily for our purposes as all of these parcels of land are only about 1.6 acres. However, it will be interesting to go to a local auction, to see what the real market price is that people are willing to pay for water front acreage during these economic slow times. One frustrating thing so far for me is that I feel that listed real estate prices don't yet reflect how slow things are, and how tough the market is going to be for sellers!~
also, these pieces of land are near where I am staying so I will head over there later this afternoon to get a first hand look at the land.

I got in contact with this real estate agent at the Rich Company in Washington , North Carolina who is in charge of Farm & Timber Land / Large Acreage sites. He seems knowledgeable and cordial and will show me around some sites but my initial impressions are that the Rich Company is of course an agency, as such, they need to create margins on their sales to sustain themselves. Inevitably, I believe it will prove more cost effective to deal directly with the seller. I am of course open to your suggestions, knowledge from experience, and general thoughts. Let me know what you think!

The Carolina Purchase

Hey Folks! The great search for the Carolina Purchase has begun. I will begin adding to this blog on a weekly basis with updates on my progress and improvements on my thinking. If you are visiting this blog, please take a moment to click on the 'following this blog' button so I can have an idea of who is keeping up with this endeavor as it will serve to inspire me to continue. Also , being down here at the moment , I have come to realize that all of us who have a mutual interest in going forward on this project need to spend some time together here in North Carolina so that you can get a feel for the region and the land. So I am proposing that you perhaps make some mental space for spending a little bit of your August 2009 here in North Carolina. Thanks All and God Bless!