It's been a while

Sorry for the hiatus...life has been busy and in the free time I've had, I've been lazy. Quite a bit of progress has been made although we are behind schedule. Rainy weather has us a few weeks behind where we'd like to be. We should still finish before our lease is up though toward the end of August. Here's a look at what has happened over the past couple of weeks:

Tubs delivered

Upstairs before framing/roof



"Dried in"...although every time it rains it still gets soaking wet. Haven't understood why they call it "dried in" at this point!

Probably will need a window covering of some sort there!

So as you can see, we now have windows and some doors! They are LoE rated windows and after going to the window place, it is amazing how energy efficient, but cheap feeling windows are these days. They feel flimsy (if that is a word) to us. But some of the most expensive windows there felt like that. These are all energy star rated and supposed to help keep the costs down. Wish I could have budgeted for some of the windows with Argon in them, but these are better than what we have now and should be good for our first home.

Plumbing and HVAC guys start tomorrow and Wednesday while the framers finish framing the basement and a few other small jobs before they move on. Tomorrow we are also doing an electrical walk through. Any suggestions? I plan on doing dimmers throughout most of the house. Going to make sure where we plan on putting the Christmas tree has an outlet controlled by a switch. Making sure there is an outlet on the island in the kitchen. Putting outlets so I can run under cabinet lighting. Outlets where our night stands will go. If I can budget, I will have outlets on the roof for Christmas lights if we do them, but I think that will push my budget. I'm sure I have other ideas written down, but feel free to comment with any suggestions!

We finalized the kitchen plans today with our designer. That is a huge relief! We had been working with two different designers and I basically had them competing against each other. Both started off about $2000-3000 over our budget. After all was said and done, one of them basically gave us everything we wanted, plus bumped us up to 42" cabinets throughout the kitchen and came in right on budget. We didn't have to drop anything we wanted, gained stuff we hadn't even thought possible, and got them to come down between $2000-3000! Our builder was impressed. He said he has never seen them come down quite that much. Finally one of them dropped out of the race today and said she couldn't go any lower, so we finalized with the other guy. Here are the drawings:

The cabinets will be a very dark "espresso" color and we have selected this hardware (in brushed nickel):

We will have granite, but haven't selected that yet. We want something in the low-mid level price range that is very light. Jenny likes anything with as white of a base as possible to go with the dark cabinets. My next house will definitely have the Cambria stuff in it! That stuff is amazing. I know...too early to think of the next house!

We also have our appliances picked out. We had the refrigerator ordeal (will never buy from Sears again), but finally got it sorted out and got a great deal when Best Buy price matched so we could return the damaged piece of garbage Sears tried to dump on us. We will be doing all stainless steel appliances. We are doing a slide in range with smoothtop electric. Everyone says go gas, but we really don't like it for some reason. Our microwave that will be an OTR unit also has a convection bake capability (up to 450 degrees), and will serve as a small, second oven. We didn't even know that existed and are excited about that!

That is about it for now. I will try to update this more frequently! Take it easy everyone.

Framing

Sorry it has been so long! Things have been moving slowly thanks to lots of rain and the framing company running behind last week. Since the last post, things are starting to progress and we've had some minor frustrations along the way. We were excited to see the foundation and basement floor get finished one day, only to go back the next day to see that some teenagers in the neighborhood drew all over the walls...
Fortunately, they just used chalk. It is a nice neighborhood, so this was disheartening. They drew satanic things over each wall of the basement. We are Christians, so this was not something we wanted to experience while building of first home. Jenny was quite bothered by it and we are thinking about having a "house blessing" by her hometown preacher that she knows right before we move in. We had entertained doing this before any of this happened as some of her friends (or my co-workers...can't remember) have had that done and said it added a nice feel and made their new homes feel safe, but now I'd say there is a pretty good chance we will go through with that.

Onto more fun things! Late last week they got the floor joists in. That was fun to see and gave me an idea of how high the basement ceiling is going to be. We had them put higher ceilings in the basement to make it more open. I have to say, it has exceeded our expecations in terms of how high the ceilings are and how much bigger it makes it feel down there!

 

 

Last week we got to start meeting with the kitchen designers. One of them has come in right on budget and given us everything we had asked for. The other person was much more enjoyable to work with, but I have a feeling she won't be able to meet our budget. We are still waiting to hear back from her. With the first guy, we even got some extras that I hadn't planned on such as soft close drawers. We are having a hard time selecting granite. We really like very dark cabinets. We have picked a shade of espresso. We know we want a lighter colored granite to accent these and not make the kitchen too dark. Jenny seams to like granite with as close to a white base as possible. We also tend to like granite with "flecks" of shiny silver in it. We are trying to stick to a grade A or B granite for budget reasons. We will have to go to more places soon and see what else is out there. We have considered Kashmir White, but aren't completely sold on it. She really liked one called Tuscany, but we have had a hard time finding it elsewhere and we imagine it is likely more pricey.

 

Saturday we went and talked with the appliance guy. I was extremely frustrated when we left! He knew our budget, but kept showing me things outside of my budget like it was acceptable. I finally got aggitated and told him to stop and to show us things inside our budget. He finally got the hint and dulled it down a little! However, we kept coming in over budget and discovered it was mostly because of the refrigerator. We really want a french door refrigerator with the pull out freezer on the bottom. Having an ice/water dispenser is non-negotiable with me. Unfortunately, it kept running us well over budget compared to doing a refrigerator without the ice/water dispenser. After we left, we went and looked at some local retail stores and discovered a refrigerator we had seen months ago was coming down in price. We then went to Sears and found it to be on clearance for even less! Then the sales guy tells us he will hold it for us and we could come back the next night and buy it during the "Friends and Family" sale going on...saved an additional 15%. Overall, we got the refrigerator for half of the original price we had seen it months ago! This also put us right back on budget. Since then he has sent me different options for the other kitchen appliances and we are right on track! He has definitely redeemed himself. I compared his prices to other stores and he is routinely coming in $200-600 cheaper per appliance for the same model! We have decided on a slide-in style range, middle of the line dishwasher, and an over-the-range microwave that has a convection baking setting to basically serve as another oven for smaller items! Next best thing to having a double oven I suppose! We are close to making our final selection and at least getting that done. 

Back to the building process...
Yesterday they made some of the walls and today they put some up. So far just the first floor external walls so I am excited to see what they do tomorrow. I hope they don't let a couple of pop-up storms stop them from working at all tomorrow. But ultimately, whatever is best for the house is fine by me.

To wrap things up, here are the latest pictures from tonight's visit!

Wet basement thanks to the rain...

Lovin' us some concrete

Week 2 came to a close and onto week 3. The weather has been rough, so a little slow going at this point. Last week came the gravel and they dug out the sump pump.

 

A couple days later, came out to see the frame being put up!

 

 

Fortunately, we had a few days where the weather cooperated and they got the walls poured.

 

Yesterday, we climbed down into the basement and layed out the finished basement. The builder measured out where the stairs, the bathroom, etc would be so we could get a visual of sorts. After we layed out my initial plan, I decided that I did not like it and we completely redesigned everything on the spot. We found a much better layout in the basement that will allow it to be more open instead of chopped up. We are glad we climbed down and marked everything out with him instead of just going off of paper because it helped a ton. He had the walls water sealed today and the plumbing in the basement will go in tomorrow. Then, when we can get a string of dry days (and once we get the next money draw squared away), he can pour the basement and garage floors and start framing. He said he expects to start framing in 1.5-2 weeks.

 

That's all for now! And congrats to another blogger, Amy, and her family for completing their home and moving in this past week! Check their blog out at http://lot23blog.blogspot.com/ if you are looking for more insight into the building process. It has helped me out along the way so far!

 

Underway!

We are now officially 3 days in and seeing some progress. However, after tomorrow it is supposed to rain and he said next week could be slow going as far as progress goes. But hey, at least we are started! They dug the basement out, cleared out some of the brush/overgrowth from the back of the property, and poured the footers today. I know we aren't building a huge house for our first home, but when I saw the footers I was kind of suprised. We both thought it looked kind of small. When I talked with our builder today, I started with "So when we saw the..." and then he cut me off and he said, "I know exactly what you are about to say! And no, it isn't as small as it looks. This is the first thing almost every client says to a builder once this gets going...I promise." I believe him since I literally didn't even get to say that we thought it looked a little smaller than what we were thinking.

Here is a look at the progress:

Coolest hole in the ground I've ever seen...

There were a few of these trees near the back of the property that I requested they not take down...so far so good. The builders dad knows a lot about trees and thinks they are wild pears.

 



 

Footers are in

Tomorrow they will poor the gravel. Then he said if the weather does what it says it might, he probably won't get to the walls at least until Wednesday next week. Sucks, but I'd rather they do it right and not rush it.

On a side note, I've now met the couple that lives next door and a neighbor from across the street. They are all our age and very nice! I think we will get along great with them. We are all huge Reds and Bengals fans and are already planning for get togethers for the games and bonfires this summer! We could really use a few new friends and I hope these neighbors are the answer.

That's all for now!

Stake out

We drove by today to see the lot all staked out and to get a glimpse of where the house will sit. Pretty cool to see actually! The builder says he almost started digging yesterday, but said he opted not to because of a storm we are supposed to get Sunday. He said that we need to get going though and will be digging "no matter what" by Tuesday at the latest. He said a normal day of rain would be fine, but the storm we are supposed to get Sunday is supposed to be pretty heavy so he didn't want to dig it and have it full of water. Now time for some pictures:

That's right...we have signs. Almost as good as making it Facebook Official

 



 Me standing in the kitchen

 

 Jenny relaxing in the Great Room (or maybe the coat closet...)

 

 Looking at the back of the house

 

View from the front

 

 

That is all of the excitement for now. Hope to broadcast soon from deep inside our soon-to-be basement. Still trying to convince to builder to let me mess around in the excavator...I would probably cause a delay!

Closing complete!

We finally closed! It was actually quite short and painless...other than the whole putting down a crap ton of money! Never wrote a check that big and am not looking forward to seeing how that looks on my bank account tomorrow.

The builder says he will have the lot staked tomorrow or the next day and since the ground is so wet he would like to wait until next week to start digging. Can't believe how excited we are to just see the lot staked out and where the house is going to sit exactly.

Hopefully more exciting posts with pictures soon!

Hiatus...

So instead of me ranting about how I now feel about the banking industry, I will just say that I am going to take a break from posting on here until we close. Lord knows when that will be as I was informed today that it likely won't be this week. I don't want this blog to turn into a negative one, so I will just leave it with that and see you all down the road whenever they decide they can get to my file so we can close.

UPDATE: they have scheduled our closing date for Tuesday...lets hope it holds!

Let's get this week started!

Hopefully this week will live up to the excitement that didn't occur last week. Last week we were supposed to close on the construction loan on Monday and start digging on Wednesday. Come Wednesday, still no word on the construction loan. The lender throughout the entire week was constantly being bombarded by myself, my realtor, our builder, and the realtor for the land (since we are packaging together our land and construction loan together). I guess that didn't phase him because we had no answer going into Friday (which happened to be the only day I worked last week since it was my off week). Then Friday as soon as I get to work I start getting slammed with emails and phone calls saying that the processor needed this and that. The lender keeps stating that the sooner I can get this additional information turned in, the faster things will move along! Let's slow this down a little and rewind; I had been on these people all week and stated multiple times that I really need to get this stuff done. I repeatedly stated that I only worked Friday of last week and that the rest of the week I was available at any moment for any reason and urged them to get to work and inform me ASAP of anything extra they need. I also repeatedly said that under no circumstances can I take off a day that I am scheduled to work. I work in an ER...your schedule is set. It doesn't matter if you are sick, your car broke down, you want a day off, your leg fell off, nothing. If you can't get someone to cover your shift, you go in. I have worked very sick many times...that's the nature of the job and you know this going in. So no, I can't take a day off to close or meet for any reason. My builder gets this, my realtor gets this, but apparently you don't go through enough training/schooling when you do whatever it is you do to become a construction loan/mortgage lender to comprehend this.
Anyways, I kid you not, 5 minutes after I get to the hospital on Friday I get several emails and calls stating they need this additional information. Fortunately, we weren't terribly busy, so after seeing some patients and ordering some tests, I was able to fax them the information they needed while waiting for the test results to come back. This is a rarity for me to be able to do this and I am grateful I was able to. The lender called me after that to give me a status update and seemed very excited like everything was fine. He questioned my lack of enthusiasm that things were moving along and that was enough to finally set me off. He got an earful on how aggravated that I was getting all of these requests on the only day of the week that I am working and that no, I was not excited to be 1-2 weeks behind. I threw in some (I'm sure not so life changing) comments on how in my line or work as well as most other peoples jobs, it is not acceptable to set deadlines and run this far behind. I told him that most people if they say something will be done will stay after and get it done because that is common courtesy and respect to your clients. I am sure if it was only pushed back 1-3 days I would have been much less irritated, but my realtor got me fired up when she said "there is no excuse for a closing being delayed more than a couple of days." To be fair, I made sure he understood that I was not at all upset with him because he had been pushing his processing department all week and they are the ones that kept pushing things off. But he is an extension of his company and if he wanted to, could pass on the message.

Moral of the story is 1) I should have went into mortgage processing where apparently you can work at your own pace and do things as slowly as you desire, 2) It's amazing how fast they are working now that I unleashed on them and 3) I am grumpy at work.

So the weekend has gone by and I am much more relaxed and not quite as mean. I have aspirations of great things happening this week! On my last discussion with the lender (which was much more calm and cheerful), he said that we are through underwriting and processing with the bank and they just had to forward it on to the mortgage insurance underwriters. He said they are much more easy going and have to respond within 48 hours. He said although they got it all turned over to them in the afternoon on Friday to probably expect any requests for additional information on Tuesday. We are hoping for a closing date on Wednesday or Thursday...otherwise I won't be able to schedule it until the following Monday due to my schedule. Our builder has all of the building permits and final blue prints and is just waiting for the go ahead. After tomorrow, the weather is supposed to be pretty decent the rest of the week, so hopefully no set backs! Of course, I don't take too much stock in the weather forecast since they can't seem to get the weather right 12 hours from now.

Hoping my next post is either good news on a closing or a post with pictures of the staked out property, which means we have closed!

Never knew how impatient we were!

Nothing exciting to report right now...just filling some time while we continue waiting! Our builder called yesterday and the lender who originally said "March 11th will be the latest closing date for the construction loan " has pushed it back." We do not know when yet. We hope to know more Monday. Supposedly they still think we will get it done this coming week. The appraiser is backed up and seems to be taking his sweet time! The builder and our realtor said that I shouldn't be surprised because closing is almost always pushed back. Doesn't make waiting any easier though!

The builder says he still has things scheduled to be delivered this coming Wednesday and that they will have it surveyed and staked out "early this coming week." We got about 5" of snow this past Wednesday, which for Northern Kentucky is a moderate sized snow storm. You should see the way these people panic around here at the mention of a flurry...it is kind of sad! Fortunately, yesterday and today have been near 50 degrees and it is all gone. Now we just need it not to rain for the forseeable future so things dry up!

In the mean time, I've been dreaming up my "man cave" in the basement. I've decided that I will most likely be getting a projector and having a nice, big screen down there for sporting events/movies. We are pretty excited about that and hope it will attract some of our friends to come over more. We also look forward to having a better space to have family over more. We've noticed over the past few years that everyone (our friends and us) seems to be going their own way and we rarely hang out with people anymore.  This growing up thing and having big kid jobs is not cool.

Hope to have more news on Monday. Have a great weekend everyone!

Blueprint complete!

Yesterday we met with our builder so he could show us the final blueprint and make sure there wasn't anything else we could think of to have changed last minute. We were very happy with how it turned out! We got everything in there that we had asked for and can't wait to see it come together! I will post a picture of the elevation below. I figure if I post the actual blueprint it is some kind of copyright infringement since it isn't just the floor plan...so I will probably refrain from that.

Now onto the appraisal and he has some equipment ready to be dropped off on March 13 or 14 to get digging assuming everything goes on time with the closing of the construction loan (which looks promising).

Contract complete

We sat down today with the realtor and builder and talked numbers/got the contract signed. Now the waiting game begins...he is submitting all floor plan changes to the designer tomorrow who will have the blue prints for us in 1-2 weeks. Then we can get those to the lender who can begin the appraisal and work on getting us to closing on the construction loan. All of this is supposed to be finished sometime between now and March 11. Then....we can BREAK GROUND!

Overall, we are very happy with the numbers and what we are going to be able to get. We are kind of surprised that we are going to be able to get the upgrades that we will be getting for our first house and staying within our budget. To get the basement finished, we will be going a little over budget. We've read and been told that it is cheaper to get this done during construction than coming back later to do.

Some of the structural things we are happy about are 9ft ceilings on the main level and raised ceilings in the basement. We also are getting a 2ft bump out in the kitchin/dining area for a little more room. Nothing big, but I think it will help open the space up a little. He is doing some nice built in cabinets in the mud room and a built in bench inside the front door in the foyer. We should have enough on budget to do mid-level cabinets, granite countertops, and nice stainless steel kitchen appliances. There is enough on budget to have some nice recessed lights in the kitchen/basement as well as along the front porch. Something I liked in the builders house that he showed us were vent lights along the stairway down to the basement. We are getting ceiling fans/ceiling fan connections in all bedrooms and the great room. He will be doing a tray ceiling with crown molding and rope light in the master bedroom.

We were also happy to see that there was seeding/straw placement for the yard and a budget for some landscaping. Thankfully, he thought of things that we hadn't thought of...

Anyways, there probably won't be many updates until closing/ground breaking unless some other unexpected news pops up so we will see you then!

Pre-approved!

After yesterdays excitement, the corrected credit report allowed the lender to be able to pre-approve us in time to keep the lot and not have it bought out from under us. We are very relieved! I probably could have dealt with losing the lot, but not being approved for this loan would have led me to seriously question whether I wanted to continue with the building process. This loan is a one time close construction loan with much, much better terms than our other option(s).

So now we meet with the builder tomorrow afternoon to finalize some changes to the floor plan. Then we submit it to the designer, get the appraisal, close out the construction loan and start building. The builder expects to begin in 1 month!

We are excited to get this show on the road. In the end, we could have got a much larger house if we would have bought a previously lived in house instead of building, but we both agree that it wouldn't feel like "our" home. We don't know why we can't shake that feeling, but ultimately that was a large part in deciding to build a more moderately sized custom, well-built home that we are the first owners of. Plus, after learning about the new framing and energy certifications that have been implemented in the past few years, I couldn't make myself comfortable not building a custom home that meets those standards and is of that quality. This way, I know I have an energy efficient home built the way I wanted and won't have any surprises that you typically find after you buy a previously owned home.

The roller coaster continues!

So as I've stated in previous posts, there was an error on my credit report and they were waiting on this to be clarified before they would give me my pre-approval letter for the construction loan. Around 3:30 PM I sent a quick email to the lender and asked if I could have the phone number to the credit bureau so I could get a status updated since we hadn't heard anything about it yet this week. He then replies and said the he actually has been working on that for the past hour and would let me know.  Then things get crazy...

At 4PM my builder calls me and tells me that the lot that we have a hold on could be gone by 10am tomorrow morning! These remaining lots in this subdivision have sat untouched and without any offers for the past 2-3 years. Now the owner of the land lets him know that they are using the "24 hour notice" that we had when we put a hold on the lot to where we either have to buy the land or it will be bought by someone else since we hadn't done a contract yet. Basically, one of the national homebuilders around here (Maronda Homes) contacted them and they want to buy all of the remaining lots (about 10 of them) that are left in the subdivision...

So at this point, we can't come up with a contract because we need the pre-approval. I then talk to the other lender who had already pre-approved me for a less appealing loan and he says that when he pulled my credit report that the error the other lender saw was not on his report. He offers to email it to me and was completely cool and urged me to go with the other lender because the loan is that much better. He emails me the credit report which I then send off to the lender we have been waiting on who at the same time also received the revised credit report with the error corrected! He then sends it off to the underwriter....who is no longer at work.  So he had his staff promise to hand it to the person the moment they walk in the door tomorrow morning and we are hoping for an answer and pre-approval before 10am.  The land contract is already filled out and ready to be sent the moment we get the approval.  If not, then we potentially lose the lot and have to find another one. Problem is, we've kept our eyes out for affordable/nice lots in the area because this lot isn't exactly our dream lot, but nothing is available/affordable.  I have no idea what we will do if we lose this lot since there aren't really any other options at this point that we are happy with.

We are also meeting with the builder tomorrow to go over more floor plan and proposal things.

I will update tomorrow with the outcome...wish us luck!

Picture time

Alright, so after reading other peoples posts during the home construction process I've decided that my blog is getting boring due to lack of pictures. There isn't much to show, but here we go! 

 

Alright...this is the lot we will be building on. We are getting a GREAT deal on it. It costs about $15000 less than any other lot in this area of the same size. That gives us extra money to throw at upgrades as we are on a pretty tight budget thanks to my student loans.  The lot is tucked in the back of this established custom built neighborhood and I guess nobody seems to look back there. It is on a quiet cul-de-sac side street. The lot itself is not in the cul-de-sac. The only thing we aren't crazy about is the fact that there is a "salt dome" in the background for the county we live in. However, the plus side is that there will never be anyones house in the backyard and the only time it will be annoying is occasionally during the winter when we are getting snow (which isn't terribly bad in this area). The lot tends to slope up in the back and then dip back down again. When they start digging, he says he can create another hill at the very back to help block some of that out. We can plant some trees on top of that to block out the dome behind the property. The county also has a huge fence back there so we don't have to worry about fencing that section in at least.

 

 

The is the outside of the house we are designing...excuse my lack of drawing abilities. It is hard to tell how it looks because of my drawing, but the garage sticks out a little and there is a front porch over the entry and across the front of the house. I added the dome shaped window which is a change from the original plan because it is a 2-story foyer as you walk through the front door and thought it would look nicer. I will probably have them do stone around the dome window, shaker siding on the left upper section by the left two windows, and brick on the entire garage section. The subdivision requires a brick wrap on all houses. On the porch, I have stone bases drawn in there before the column continues up. Who knows, this all could change, but that is the plan for now.

The floor plans are still being tweaked or I would throw those on here too. Once I get them done, I will put them up. I am waiting on the builder and designer to work some issues out that I am not too happy about.

As for the status of other things, we are still waiting to hear from the credit bureau on the mistake they need to fix for us to get approved and we are meeting with the builder Friday to iron out more details and possibly go over the contract.

So there, we now have pictures and I feel that the blog is extremely exciting to read now...extremely.  Alright, maybe not, but it will work for now!

Still waiting

We are still waiting on th credit bureau to correct my credit report. I hope it is resolved very soon. I am anxious to get things started. We really need to break ground by mid to late March to stay on schedule.

Anyways, on a non-house related note, I have some fun news for myself. Unfortunately, two of my colleagues at work recently announced that they are moving about 2 hours away and will no longer be with our physician group in our ER. However, at the same time that they announced this, one of my buddies from undergrad called me up and asked if our group had any openings! He has been working in an ER (he is also a Physician Assistant) near Chicago and is wanting to move back home to this area. I spoke with our head physician and he is setting up an interview for him! It would be fun to have an old friend join our group. On top of that, we are both huge Cincinnati Reds fans and on our off days could take off and take in some afternoon games during the week. What is even more exciting is that he says he wants to build a house as well and is going to look at some lots by our lot. If he is hired fast enough we are going to try to talk the owner of the land into getting us a discount package deal. Same for the builder since business is slow.

Anyways, I hope to have some good news in the next few days. If anyone knows how long it takes the credit bureau to correct your report, please let me know!

That was unexpected...

Well...we filled the application out for our construction loan as I last wrote and the branch manager ran some numbers and assured us that there was no way it wouldn't be approved. So imagine my surprise when I talk to him today and he says that it didn't go through...He says the "Senior VP" wouldn't approve a 90/10 construction loan and would require the full 20% down because of my student loans...
I guess this "Senior VP" doesn't know much about student loans. I am a Physician Assistant...PA's, NP's and MD's rack up a TON of student loans...most loan officers that know what they are doing will consider the income we bring in to be acceptable and not consider the student loans "bad debt."  

Anyways, I asked why this all of the sudden was an issue and it seems that the person who shot this down made a very wrong assumption about my student loan payments after viewing our credit reports. I had consolidated my student loans last year and I guess the person didn't read the report very closely and read each disbursement of my student loans during grad school as separate loans...so basically there were what appeared to be SEVERAL separate student loans which if you add up end up being WAY over what I report that my student loans/monthly payment are. The gentlemen we were working with at this bank says this could change things and asked if I had proof of this. So I emailed him the latest Loan Summary Report and will wait and see if it makes a difference.  If not, someone really needs to evaluate their job because they can't add or read...

If this falls through, we have another option to finance this thing that was already approved, but we really would rather not as it is more costly and complicated. However, it would be our only choice because we absolutely cannot do the full 20% because it would significantly decrease our financial security.

Hope to report better news tomorrow...for now, the wind has been taken out of our sails and apparently for no good reason.

Making some progress

Over the past week we got some more firm numbers from the lender that we were having doubts about and he was very honest and told us that we should "take the other offer and run!" He said that he hasn't seen a conventional 90% financing construction loan in years and if we had one offered to us that we should take it immediately. So we met with the lender offering this loan this morning and filled out the official loan application. After running some numbers he feels there will be no issues obtaining this loan.

After this meeting we met with the builder and finally started working on the floor plans. He is going to take them to his designers over the next few days and see what they think. I've already alterred the plan we decided on today 3 different ways and submitted them to the builder since he left this afternoon! We are excited about one of the changes to the layout that I made, but are hoping it fits into the budget since it added a small extension off the back of the house to add a "breakfast room."

Glad we are making some progress! The builder wants to meet again next week since we can't get together over the next several days...my work schedule is a little different since I work in the ER. We can't wait to get out of this condo and are ecstatic not to have to spend another winter here. It is almost as cold in this place as it has been outside (in the teens and 20s this past week). Alright, so it isn't that bad, but I've lived in cheap apartments that were older than this that weren't nearly as drafty. You cannot walk around here without being bundled up. On top of that, the circuit breaker keeps tripping almost every other day on the furnace. The landlord had us call a repair guy who came out, charged the poor lady $200 and couldn't find a thing wrong...that's useful.

The beginning...

After years of hard work through school and finally starting our lives together a little more than a year ago, we (Jared & Jenny) are finally looking to buy/build our first home! This blog will give anyone who cares to read it, a look into building a custom home and our personal journey. We will try to answer any questions as often as possible and look forward to any input anyone has. Pictures are sure to come as the construction process begins!

Here is what led us towards building a custom home:
We began our house search late last summer (July 2012). Jenny's former co-worker/friend now works as a realtor and has been with us since the beginning of the process. It started by looking at a few homes that were on the market. We saw some potential in some houses, but were just kicking the tires at first as we knew financially we wouldn't be ready to move on anything until late winter/early spring 2013. Throughout the process, we happened to look at a few foreclosed homes which normally would have been well out of our price range. We saw the potential in them, but ultimately couldn't get over the fact that almost each foreclosure we looked at had sat there for quite some time before being placed on the market and sustained significant water damage (in almost every one of them!). Some of them had been blatantly damaged by the previous owner on their way out. We can't imagine the feeling of losing your own home that you worked so hard for, so we can't say we were surprised.

Finally, our realtor set up an appointment to look at a new construction home that was placed on the market by a local "big builder." I won't use their name or any other builders name other than ours currently because I'm not trying to put anyone down. After seeing a new construction, we had a really hard time entertaining the thought of buying a formerly lived in home. We've seen a few that were well kept and didn't need much work, but the idea of being the first people to live in the house made it feel like it was truly "ours." We then spent the next couple of months talking with various "big builders" in the area and even designed a few houses with them. We narrowed out all but one of the big building companies and decided on one that was more local and had a great reputation for building durable homes. On top of that, my parents had lived in a home built by this company for the past 15 years without one problem in their home, so I knew the quality they produce. This builder also introduced the "Energy Star certification" process to us as well. At first, I thought it was just a sales pitch. Then I did some research on the actual savings you can earn on your utility bills by owning an Energy Star certified home. I even spoke with a couple who said that they went from a 1500 sq. foot home to an Energy Star certified home that was over twice the size of their own home and have never had a bill over $100. They said most of the time it failed to approach $70! We live in a 3 bedroom condo right now and it is very poorly constructed. Our last heating bill was $150...and we have the thermostat set at 67...and it never reaches that temp. From this point on, we knew we wouldn't be happy unless we had an Energy Star Certified home. Of course, the materials that must be used tend to run up the cost of building one of these homes, but we plan on being there for 10+ years and it should pay for itself plus add to resale value later.

Some of my co-workers had recommended building custom, but I didn't think we could afford it. Our realtor happened to know a custom builder that she recommended we meet with. By the time we met with him, we had spoken with 2 other custom builders and weren't making much progress with them. We weren't really sure what to expect and had all but decided to abandon the custom builder search for our first home and try that down the road for future homes. However, we agreed to meet and we had a completely different experience. For the first time during the home building process, we met a gentlemen who owns his own custom construction/rehabilitation company and he seemed like a genuine, honest guy. He owns RJ Homes, LLC here in Northern Kentucky. For the first time, we didn't feel like we were being coaxed into a situation where we had a very high likelihood of being screwed out of a lot of time and extra money. He only builds a handful of homes per year and we were able to see some of his work. We were very impressed and if we could budget it, were ready to move on. This meeting happened about 3-4 months ago.

Since then, we've been trying to hash out the financing. Since the market crashed, construction loans are hard to come by unless you have the full 20% down payment to throw at it. We only have about 10% we can put down for a down payment. On top of that, only small local banks tend to offer them. We tried several...and I mean several banks between RJ, our realtor, and ourselves making many phone calls. For the first 1.5 months, not a lot of luck. RJ then had the difficult decision to decide whether to call it quits or to decide if he was comfortable enough with the situation for him to take out the loan and have us buy it from him at the end. The risk to him if he took out the loan is that something falls through with the financing on our part and we are unable to buy it from him at the end...then he is stuck with a house that he didn't want and now has to sell. I am not going to pretend to know what way he was leaning, but we felt as though he may go through with it. Fortunately, before that decision had to be made, our realtor talked with a lender who said he could help. This was about 3 weeks ago. He knew a way where I only had to put a minimum of 3.5% down on the home at the end, but during the entire construction process, the full 20% of the cost of the home had to be "frozen" in an account with the bank providing the loan. Following closing of the house at the end, I could then retain my money and put as little as 3.5% down or however much I ended up wanting to put down. I intend on putting down 10%. That would work, but freezing the whole 20% was going to put us in a tight financial spot by not leaving us with much available money to live off of initially.

At this time, that was the only option as far as me taking out a construction loan. RJ, the lender, and I sat down and hashed out the details such as draw schedules, draw fees, closing (there were 2 closings in this construction loan...one at the beginning, and then another at the end when converting it to a mortgage...), and time constraints on the loan. RJ said it was sound on his end and if I worked out the details and was comfortable with it then we could get started. I was starting to come around, but still had a fair amount of questions on this loan. The lender was a very difficult person to talk with and I just wasn't getting a good feeling. This is all new to me and I would frequently have to ask him to "dumb it down" for me. He would basically then just state the same thing over again in the same words. It was very frustrating. I work in an ER and it was basically like me telling someone with no medical training how to go in and perform a serious procedure only using medical terms. They would just look at me like I had 8 eyes...

2 days after that meeting, RJ called and said one of the original lenders we had talked to just called him and said they now offer 90% construction loans, meaning that I would only need to put down 10%. He asked if I wanted to go in and meet with the guy. I told him I would as I was having a rough time with the other lender. Jenny, our realtor, and I went and talked with him and he was great at explaining this process to a "newbie." I understood it first time through...all questions answered. On top of that, the loan is a conventional construction loan with no complications like the other loan we were working on. There is 1 closing cost at the beginning (which is small) and at the end it rolls into a fixed rate mortgage at whatever the rate is at that time. Currently it is 3.5%. There are 4 draws at $300 total for the draw fees, which is pretty good. For those new to this, a "draw" is when the builder takes money from the loan during the construction process for materials/labor. They typically do this 4 times throughout the project. Also with this loan, the builder has up to 6 months to complete the project, but this can be extended if needed. Some of the other loans we looked at had a 90 day completion time and you were penalized $100/day until it was complete! Be aware of this if you start looking into construction loans.

I feel like I will be accepting the terms of this loan and making it official within the week. However, I did ask our realtor to get with the other lender and demand solid numbers and schedules for when I will need to have cash on hand to pay for something. Unless he has some miracle to offer me, I can't see the benefit in going through with a much more complex loan with 2 closing costs instead of 1. Hopefully I hear back tomorrow...

Later this coming week when we have the financial situation smoothed out, RJ wants to meet with us to start discussing house plans and what goes on from here on out!

We have decided on a 2-story with finished basement. We love ranches, but they are much more expensive to build and given our budget, we would get much more house if we get a 2 story. We have 2 floor plans we've found online that are interesting to us and he has a handful of blueprints he is willing to show us that he has done before that would fit what we are looking for. We will make several alterations to each plan to make it truly custom to what we want. We then submit the plans to the designers and they will make the blue print for us. RJ says this typically takes 3 weeks. Then we give the blue print to the lender who will have our land and plans appraised and the building process begins! We are looking to break ground some time in March of this year.

As for where we are building...we have a lot on hold in an established subdivision in Burlington, KY. This means that we have 24 hours to decide to buy the land if someone takes interest in it and wants to buy it. It has been on the market for quite some time and this hasn't been an issue for us yet. Let's hope it stays that way until we get this deal closed! We hoped to find 1-2 acres in the Burlington area that weren't in a subdivision, but that is hard to come by in this area and it isn't cheap if you do find it. Our lot isn't our dream location, but the price is right and it is in a nice neighborhood. Plus this is our first house. We are saving about $15,000 by going with this lot vs a lot anywhere else of the same size in this area. Very reasonably priced!

Anyways, that is a long intro post so I will get going. I will update later in the week when we figure more out on the financing and discuss what happens in the meeting with the builder!