True, but city/county staff will give you their gut feeling whether they think it will pass the board/council/plan commission or not. Real estate developers generally go over their proposals with staff early on, and will scrap or go on the proposal based on staff's recommendations.
I went on my fact-finding trip today. I didn't come right out and ask the staff at the building department, but they didn't throw up any obvious barriers. The property is definitely large enough to divide, it isn't in a floodplain or any other environmentally critical area, and there is a water main and a sewer in the paved alley at the back of the property, so the new lot could get utilities from back there. But it could be expensive—the sewer in back is shallow and the property slopes down away from the alley. A house that meets the minimum setback requirement might be lower than the sewer and require a pump. Alternatively, it might be possible to get gravity flow out to the sewer in the street in front, but it would be a very long side sewer—the lot is about 180 feet from back to front—and it would require work in a busy roadway with the sewer line on the far side of the street, so that would be expensive too.
Maybe. Some counties have tract books that list all transactions by property description, making it easy to track down everything about a property. Others have grantor-grantee indexes that track by owner. Not as easy, because you have to know the owners through the course of time, and then research the owners to see if they granted easements. I would think someone at the county would help you get started. A title commitment would list easements, etc - but its tough getting one from a seller prior to closing.
I didn't have time to make an in-depth search. I asked at the recorder's office and there was nothing in their computerized records, which go back to 1981. The house was built in 1926, so there could easily be something from before that date.
Another thing to research is zoning. Find out the current zoning class of the property. There will be minimum lot sizes, frontages, building setbacks, etc listed in the zoning ordinance for each zoning class. Then determine if you can fit a decent sized house on your proposed new vacant lot given these standards. You also want to make sure that the new lot for the current house meets the standards. If you can't meet these standards, then you would have to petition to rezone the property to a zoning class that has lot area, frontage, setbacks, etc that would work.
And if you find out a public hearing is needed, then maybe you should contact the neighbors up front to see if they have any objections before you proceed.
Good luck!
The property is zoned multiple residential. It looks probable that all setback requirements could be met for the existing house, but it would end up with a very small back yard, and I'm sure be less salable than it is with its current big yards on both sides. I didn't have time to ask a real-estate agent about that, whether it would make the existing house more or less impossible to sell. I think it's rented now, but I have no desire to be a landlady even though if I'm the successful bidder I will have gotten the house so cheaply I could pay a management company to deal with everything, and still make money. I always resented being a tenant, and I feel uncomfortable about making money by putting someone else in a position in which I felt taken-advantage-of.
As to the public input, I need to re-read the ordinance more carefully. Members of the public can appeal, but it doesn't sound like one cantankerous neighbor could veto the whole thing. I think they would have to convince the City Planner or someone that the proposed subdivision is a bad idea, or actually in violation of the code, or something like that.
But I am getting cold feet about the idea. It appears that the late owner owed a number of people money, and I got conflicting info about whether the owner's other creditors would still have a valid lien against the property after the tax auction. One office said yes, the other said no. I would have thought they would have to present their claims to his executor, but anyway it sounds possible that by buying the house I might be buying some of the late owner's debts.
The recorder told me about a website where you can look up court cases all over the state by name, and it looks like his estate is in probate right here in King County. The heirs may have right of redemption even after the auction, if they can show they didn't get the notices warning them of the foreclosure or there was some other fault. The same owner has property in the tax foreclosure list in another county, and when I looked online for info earlier in my researches I found what looked like a bank foreclosure against yet another property he owned. It may be that the heirs know about the foreclosure, but there's no money in the estate to pay the taxes.
It seems very possible this property will go into the auction. The person I talked to at the treasurer's office said last year there were about a hundred properties auctioned, of which 75 were actually sold—nobody bid on the others so now the county owns them. I will keep an eye on the website. Properties that are redeemed are taken off the web, so maybe the heirs will pay the taxes and take the decision out of my hands. I'm almost hoping they do because if this goes in the auction I'd be tempted to bid on it in spite of my doubts, and that might be a dumb thing to do.
