Selling Waterfront Property

In order to sell a waterfront property today, sellers need to provide customers with detailed information about the potential for the property – what can and cannot be done with the property in view of federal, state and local zoning, health and environmental regulations. Can the house be expanded? If the existing house is taken down, exactly how big a house could be built – what’s the size of the footprint and the size of the finished two-story building? Is there room for a pool?  Are the primary building envelope and the accessory building envelope configured in such a way that the pool can be placed in the sun and not the shade?

Other important questions that need to be answered are: can the house have a basement or just a crawl space? Does it have to be on pilings? Does the existing sanitary system have to be replaced and if so can it be in-ground or must it be raised? Is the accessory building envelope large enough to hold a detached garage and/or a poolhouse?

In order to provide the in-depth information needed, the seller needs to engage a team of experts – usually an environmental permit facilitator, a surveyor and in some cases a land-use lawyer and a title-search company -- trained to come up with the answers to these and other questions.

The first step in the process is to hire the environmental permit facilitator and the surveyor to work as a team to do the following:

1.    Conduct an on-site inspection to identify the presence of regulated environmental features.

2.    Investigate the legality of existing structures.

3.    Delineate (mark) the wetlands

4.    Measure elevations

5.    Measure set-back lines to mark the permissible building envelope based on zoning, as well as traditional and environmental restrictions

6.    Identify involved agencies: agency jurisdictions: regulations; permit requirements

7.    Provide a detailed survey of the property with all information properly marked on the survey.

This survey becomes the basis for the acquisition of any and all information and /or permits relevant to converting the property to its “highest and best use,” its highest value.