It's been kind of quiet these last few weeks as I'm in that time between removing all contingencies of the sale and close of escrow. Right now all seems good. Closing was pushed out a few weeks since the seller had some debts that needed to be settled for the property to have a clean title. This allowed me the time to dig deeper in my investigation - and spend more money.
I will be very transparent with what things cost, since if you're considering a land purchase, you really should know what you're getting yourself into. After an initial review of the property by GeoConcepts (which helped me proceed to an offer), I contracted them to do a complete soil and geology report, which will be needed as I look to have the site permitted for build. This work involves collecting soil samples and having them analyzed by a lab, as well as mapping and subsurface investigation. This last piece requires excavating several test pits around the property to figure out the geology and underlying structure as it pertains to bedrock depth. This work concludes in a report of all data, findings and recommendations that both the government and architects and engineers will need. The cost for this work was $8,ooo, and included the labor cost to hand dig the test pits (since the land is so steep, this needed to be done manually). To get it all started, I did need to provide a rough idea of how I was looking to develop the property. Below is one of the illustrations I made based on online elevation data through the Los Angeles County GIS Viewer site. Ideally, I'm looking to limit how much of the land needs to be cut into, so keeping a fairly small footprint and stacking helps accomplish that.
I envision a garage with a workshop above it, setting the footing for the house foundation. An engineer and architect will come up with many more (and much better) options, but this was enough to get the geology work started.
The site work was completed last week and everything is looking great. Bedrock is fairly shallow (between 0-3 feet) below the soil, and the samples have been sent out for analysis. To complete the work, however, I need a detailed site survey, that goes beyond the property edges and accurately maps topography of the slope. I knew with this property I only had a simple boundary survey from the owner and that a proper slope mapping would have to be done at some point, and I guess that point is now. Off to find a surveyor...