| Just following up on my tale of selling my house in Chevy Chase. The sale was scheduled for last Tuesday. It was a bit nip and tuck, and when I made the call to the settlement attorney the morning of the closing, I had no idea whether it was going to happen or not. The builder, who put my house under contract without setting foot into it, not only wanted to tear down the the 1850 sq ft ranch, but he came up with a plan for a 7000 sq. ft. 3-story colonial monstrosity. It may have not been so bad, but he also insisted on putting it back on the MLS with its plans for public viewing. He had priced the unbuilt house for $2.75 million. (I didn't realize you could do that when he hadn't even closed on it yet.) He proudly faxed me the plans and the moment I saw them, I knew we were in trouble. The plan, of course, infuriated the neighbors, mostly older couples and young families, who did not want some mansion dwarfing their one- and two-story homes. The bizarre retired government worker with the rusted car in his front driveway unloaded first, refusing to sign even a form that acknowledged that he had been provided with a copy of the plans for the purpose of letting the builder apply for a building permit. He threw everything he could think of to stop the building: would lead paint be knocked loose? would asbestos fill the air during the demolition; was the new house going to block natural drainage off his property; and on and on. I helped knock down some of the wilder allegations. While I didn't especially like the plans myself, I also wasn't going to let my old wacky neighbors separate me from my payday. Next came the housewife from across the creek. She claimed to hold a right of way across my property to build a driveway. Never mind that her husband the owner never recorded the right of way; never mind that he had signed a contract with me (when I bought the property) disclaiming and abandoning the right of way that didn't exist in the first place. Her claim?--her husband had no right to sign away her property right in the right of way. This argument had the intended effect of having all the settlement and town lawyers go scrambling to find out whether she could possibly be right that she still had some right to a driveway across my land that never existed. Gosh, it was a long time ago in law school, but I seem to remember that a wife's right to dower was abolished decades ago, and besides, I think it required the husband to be dead (which at that point, I was ready and willing to make happen myself). The town council tabled the approval discussion for two weeks while they chased this nut down the rat hole. Fortunately, I was not paying for the settlement attorney because it seemed like he was trying to research the history of English feudal property rights law. I almost flew to Washington just to enjoy the spectacle of the lawyer giving his disquisition on dower and curtesy to the 5 drowsy council members and a mob of neighbors. The council meeting was scheduled for Monday night (at 10:45!); settlement was scheduled for the next morning. I called the settlement attorney Tuesday morning to find out what happened. He told me that the council argued for 2 and 1/2 hours over the approval and ultimately voted 3-2 to table the application and have the town attorney research the matter further. The builder was apoplectic, and wanted to blow up the deal. The settlement attorney suggested putting some money into escrow as a contingency that the building plans were not approved. I refused. The builder consulted with his investors by phone, and a half an hour later he called me back and said that they decided that they would close and take the property. So it was done. |
