The Right Kind of Impossible

Some things in property are impossible because the facts forbid them, and some only because everyone agrees they are. Building a house on top of a registered servitude for a municipal sewer line is the first kind. No amount of persistence changes it, and the sensible response is to let it go.

The second kind sounds different when you listen closely. "No bank will lend on a thatched house." "Nobody will pay that much on this side of town." Sometimes statements like these are true. Often they are simply what people repeat because nobody has tested them. A bank may well lend on an unusual property if the valuation supports it and the insurance is in order. A part of town may carry a higher price than people assume, once a well kept house is marketed properly to the right buyers.

The useful skill is telling the two apart, and there is a fairly reliable test. Physical and legal limits show up in documents, like the title deed and the zoning certificate. Consensus limits show up only in conversation. When an impossibility cannot point to any document at all, it is worth asking whether anyone has tried it carefully, or whether everyone has just been looking at the same ceiling.