My castle is under attack!

[Eral]

I live in a row of units in a nice leafy residential street. Next door on the right is a small park. It's a great place to live, I walk down the hill to a small shopping strip with restaurants and a newsagents and my supermarket and post office and bank. My neighbours are nice, the schools in the area are great to work in.
At the bottom of the hill, on the main street frontage is a private hospital. They have just announced plans to knock down the two houses to the left of our block and build an eight story medical centre. Next door to me. A driveway away.
I am not very enthralled by this. Probably the plan for the eight stories is their outrageous one -we object, they say "OK how about this one?" and whip out the plan for the three story building and everyone's supposed to say "Oh that's much better, go right ahead."
Well no. The amount of traffic that will be going in and out will be crazy (we have areas zoned 'residential' for a reason I always thought) and umm, I don't want a three to eight storey building looming over my house. I am quite worried that the council is going to turn around and say ,"Oh didn't you know? Your house falls into the residential/business zone part of the street. Yes. It's just your block that is zoned that way. It only said "residential" on the title? No, no, that's wrong. Too bad."
I hate moving.

[Drew]

I hope you don't own. This could destroy the property's value. (On the other hand, maybe you can find a nice elderly couple that needs/wants to live in close proximity to a hospital. Selling wouldn't be so hard in that case.

[Eral]

Oh, we do own. Which is why I feel some consternation. If it wasn't my place, I'd just go at the end of lease.
Maybe one of the doctors wants to live next door to work.

Joy!The boys are back.

[Drew]

Yeah, but just here. You're going to want to put your place on the market quickly. For the right buyer your place will be perfect (and you might even get more than you would have gotten without a hospital nearby ) but I'd expect finding that "right" buyer may take you some time. You could also try to track down some poor schmo who doesn't read the newspaper or watch the news and try to sell it to him.......

[Eral]

The poor schmo option would be evil - I couldn't do that. I am a crap land baron capitalist bourgeoisie.

[Drew]

You may not be evil, but your Agent will be if she's worth her salt.

[Andyr]

That sounds pretty sucky.

[cliffette]

That's terrible, Eral. Is it definite or just a proposal?

[Eral]

The hospital has already bought the two houses next door, given the plans to the council, and we have 14 days to object. The Council decides on the 20th Feb. What we think will happen is, they will come back with amended plans, we go through the whole process again (as I really don't want to live next to a hospital/medical suites) and even if we win, they can appeal to the government.
They seem pretty sure they can do it - the woman next door said it was such a good offer she couldn't refuse- and she has just spent $40 000 re-slating the roof and landscaping the garden. So it must have been a good offer.

I feel pretty doomed. Oh well. Maybe we'll find another place we like just as much as this.

[Regullus]

If the hospital does not make a generous offer for your house, it might make an excellent income property. I don't know if you could afford to keep the house and purchase another home but if you could I would think there would by many employees of the hospital interested in renting a home so close to work.

In my hometown, many of our hospital staff live on the same road.

Also, I think it is good to remember that you are aware that the property's charm has decreased but a new buyer will just view it as a house next to a hospital.

My parents, many years ago, brought a summer cottage, and it was nice, for many reasons, but one of the main reasons was it faced a wildlife sanctuary that was never going to built on. As the island's property values increased, for some unknown reason, the protected land was sold and two charming houses now obstruct the view. My family thinks its terrible, and we keep the shades drawn on the windows facing the new houses but if we were to sell the house, the new buyers wouldn't know the difference. We see an obstructed view, they would see two houses.

[Eral]

The hospital won't be making us an offer. We might consider the tenant option -
but taking on two mortgages is a big burden. All our extra money goes into paying off the bank, and in 5 years we have reduced the length of the loan to 14 years. But we don't have a big nest-egg for a deposit, so buying a second place would mean a cut down to the economic bone.

[underdog]

Eral, have you asked the bank if you could goto weekly payments, I did that and they automatically take the money right out of the monymarket account, it knocked the interest, for about the same payment $635/month now $165/week, from $44,000 to $21,000 at repayment and reduced the repayment by 10 years, before I was making ~$200 in principal now it's ~$100 a week in principal.