Do we or don't we?

After leaving the farm property we pulled up the listings that our home realtor had sent us and drove past 3 or 4 of the listings we felt were in line with what we were looking for. With each listing we became more confident that the vacant farm land, and building a new house, was going to be the way to go.
We then headed home for another late night of internet searching and talking about our dream home.  Another couple of days looking at maps, looking at listings, looking at floorplans, looking at financing options, looking at costs and working on budgets.
Another couple of days of reaching out to folks at county and banks and getting our realtor on board to represent us (we thought about the listing agent being a dual agent but decided, based on recommendations, that it was best to have a separate agent) and of course, talking to family and asking Do we or Don't we? AND WE WERE FINALLY READY TO MAKE AN OFFER.

This was also about the same time we found out that though the land was zone residential it did not meet the county ordinance for frontage road for residential properties. Essentially with one of my calls to county the zoning representative looking at the lot via the PIN made mention that it seemed the frontage was not very wide. Which was true, b/c as you will recall the lot is flag shaped. He then says it needs to be 100' to meet the ordinance and we review the listing and GIS mapping and sure enough it's only 46'. He says that the ordinance can be overcome with a variance approval, which requires posting signage and having legal representation appeal the zoning board and then getting the votes from the county board in order to basically not meet the ordinance. Keeping in mind the time and cost associated with this and that we would never get a permit to build our residential home unless variance is approved.
Thus our offer including a contingency that the seller obtain the variance from the county, so when we are ready to build it's one less hurdle. Of course we were upset b/c we felt misled. Afterall they had listed the property as residential build to suit.  Had I not been badgering the folks at county about potential problems with the property we were looking to buy this issue never would have been realized until we were already the owners. This was a big sticking point b/c if the variance isn't approved then we would be stuck with the land, but never able to build our home on it.
Our contract also had a contingency for us (the buyer) to complete a soil septic suitability and building feasibility tests. That is, can we put a septic system on the land and can we get a home built with a standard spread footing foundation. We received a counter offer, which we further countered and were ACCEPTED. Date July 27th 2014. Our attorney modifications came in on 8/1 and on 8/25 we requested an extension for our side of the contingencies. The variance contingency has an expiration of Dec 31, 2014. We knew we were in for a long haul with the county.