Delay Getting Florida House

We were suppose to be the proud owners of a beautiful house on a canal in Punta Gorda, FL, by now. Closing was set for yesterday, but good old Friday the 13th lived up to its reputation. The survey on the property discovered a bit of a problem. This is how it was explained to us:

I understand that you have been made aware of the problem where the home sits on the land. Apparently when this home was built the City Board looked the other way and let it be built without a variance. Also everyone who has purchased the home before you either paid cash or didn’t request a survey. Today with all the problems with foreclosures every mortgage company is requiring a survey. This home is one of the reasons.

If we don’t get this cleared and you were to close, then you may never be able to sell it or even give it away. Back in Illinois I saw a property that didn’t get a variance and when the seller tried to sell it, the County told him that he could not sell it or if he did he would have to tear down the home first. Not many options. We have an option today and we must take that option in case it may not be there down the road after you own it.

Now I know that is not what you wanted to happen since you must cancel all of your plans and change dates on your insurance etc and I feel very bad for you. But your lock is good until Dec 13th so I would change my insurance date to Dec 11th and see what happens. The zoning official said that it would take 21 days from the time of application before we could close. It is my understanding that the Seller’s Agent has started working on getting the application completed at this time and I am picking up the revised Survey tomorrow to take down to the zoning official.

Before this week, I didn't know the meaning of the word "variance." Basically, the house has an easement -- the house is built over part of the land the city could claim for utility use, or for whatever. We are waiting for the city to give us an exemption. So, we do not own the house yet. We will not own the house by Thanksgiving, so we won't be going to Florida over Thanksgiving week as we planned. We hope to go to closing sometime during the week of December 7th and are planning to start driving to Florida on December 11th for a week. Cross your fingers!

UPDATE 11/19/09: As of today, the bank that owns the house has still not submitted the variance application. It takes 3 weeks after the application is submitted! The bank can't sell the house until this problem is resolved, so WTF are they waiting on?