We bought our house 2 years ago. I've loved this house for as long as I've lived in this town. I would see it often, as I would drive by it on my way to the post office, or on my way to my inlaws house. It is an old wooden farmhouse, built in 1917, with a big wraparound porch which just calls for porch swings and rocking chairs. The kind of house that was built back when neighbors still knew each other and still borrowed cups of sugar without a thought. It went on the market back in 2001, in the summer. We went and looked at it, and I was in love. We crunched numbers, decided that we could afford it, but it would take every penny we had, and we wouldn't be able to have another baby like I wanted. So we decided against it. I would cringe every time that I drove by the house, expecting a "sold" sign to be out front. Then 9/11 happened and the bottom fell out of the real estate market. The house was taken off the market. Each time I would drive by the house though still, my heart would physically hurt. I felt like someone else was living in my house. The house went on the market again briefly about a year or so later, but by this time we had a newborn, and really no money. It didn't stay on the market long before it was taken off. Finally came one day in the spring of 2004. I was on my way to the post office, and saw a "For Sale by Owner" sign out front. What interesting timing. We had always planned not to buy for another year, but just about 2 weeks earlier I had been asking a lady at our church who is in the mortgage business about how long she thought interest rates would stay so low, and she had given me some advice on ways to go about buying sooner than we had planned. I hadn't thought that much about it until seeing that FSBO sign. I went home and talked to Mike, and then called the number. This was a Friday. We went and looked at the house on Sunday, and made an offer Monday morning. They accepted the offer Monday night. We closed on the house 3 weeks to the day after I first say that it was for sale. Since then I've realized that this house always felt like home to me, because it was supposed to be. It just wasn't supposed to be as soon as I thought.
And now it looks like all that is going to be changing. You see, the town I live in is growing very rapidly, and it wasn't built to do so. Many new housing additions are going in, without enough roadways to get in and out of them. So there's where we come in. As nice and rural as our home appears from the pictures below, it also happens to be smack in the middle of all the action. We've known for awhile that they plan to widen the road in front of our house, which will take a large chunk of our front yard: a problem since the house is relatively close to the road as it is, as you can see from the picture at the bottom. Last night we found out more news. You see this first picture here with the nice tree line all the way across the back? Within the next 3 years, all those trees will be gone, and you will see a road in it's place. I'm not quite sure what will happen to the pond that happens to be there, or the trees for that matter. I can tell you that the amount the city will probably offer me for the taking of my land will come nowhere close to what they will really be taking from me, which is my outdoor on-earth sanctuary from all the chaos in my world. I'm trying to stay positive about all these changes, and think about how valuable the property is likely to become over time as commercial property, but all I can think of is the loss of a piece of history, if my 1917 house has to make way for a mini-mart. 
3 comments:
Ah man that really stinks! I dont understand though if it is your property how can they take it? That doesnt seem right at all.
They take it whether she wants them to or not, and if she fights them they will just take her to court and claim emminent domain.
Cheryl, you should look into how much it would cost to move your house. You'd lose the land, obviously, but make the city pay through the nose for it, and you can afford to buy a sizable piece of land somewhere else, and still keep your house.
I'm sorry hon. I know how much you love your house, and the land it's on. But maybe there's a way to at least preserve the house and move it to new land.
Shannon is right. They do have to pay "fair market value" but the landowner usually gets shafted on that, as they only consider a percentage of what the entire land is worth, as opposed to how it really effects the use of the land. The landowner does, however, have the right to a condemnation hearing, where three "commissioners" who are residents of the town make a decision as to what the landowner should get.
You know, Shannon, I have thought of the idea of making them move the house, if their taking does make the current position unliveable. This is, after all, supposed to the be the town's "historic district".
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