Let the paperwork begin!

Let me tell you! This process is not the most fun thing we've ever done!

In a previous post I told you that we had to practically give our home away when we "sold" it. Because we didn't walk away with a dime from the sale of our house, we had to start at $0 saving for a down payment for our new house. Luckily, we are living with my parents and they are generous enough to not charge us a dime to invade their space.

When we started shopping for mortgage/construction loans, most banks wanted 20% down. I understand how this may be possible for folks who actually made some money on a home but not us. It was pretty defeating. If we were going to save that much money it was going to take us a really long time! We definitely didn't want to wear out our welcome with my parents so we kept searching.

We came across Park National Bank and found that their down payment requirement was only 5%! We started getting our paperwork submitted and the rest is history!

Here are the items that were required for our loan application:

1. Last two pay stubs
2. Last 2 months of bank statements
3. Last two years of tax returns

 

Once all that was submitted, the process was pretty simple.

We elected to clear the property on our own, it was pretty heavily wooded and doing that would save us $5000. We had about 30 days to get the property cleared. They told us to clear the dimensions of the house plus 30 feet on every side.

 

Here is what our property looked like before we began clearing. We purchased 11.71 acres and we were ready to mark our trees to be cut down.

 

We (but mostly Kyle) spend about 4 weekends working on the property. It was not an easy job! Near the end, the trees were just too big. Once he got the bigger trees down, we didn't have any way to move them. Luckily, we have great friends with the right equipment! Here is a photo of our friend taking care of business!

 

 

 

 

Once the bank let the builder know we were underway, the bank went out to appraise the property and the builder is scheduled to stake the house this week! Our loan is scheduled to close on Dec. 18 and then they will begin building!!!

EXCITING!!!

 

 

 



We found a house!!! JUST KIDDING!

A beautiful home came on the market and because I'm an MLS stalker we had an appointment within hours of it's posting. We went, we offered, we were out-bid :(
We were pretty bummed because this home offered an amazing view, lots of land, 2 ponds and a barn, most of what we had on our wish list.
This is the one that got away....

We picked ourselves up, and forged ahead!
We looked at several more homes after this but they all came up short.
I was still convinced we could build and Kyle was convinced that it wasn't going to be possible. In a last ditch effort to see if we could find a reasonably priced builder, I called TK Constructors and we scheduled a meeting with the salesperson, Jeff.

Here is the house plan we decided on pricing with TK, it wasn't our original plan but it had all of the things on our checklist plus, it was bigger and had a two car garage!

We made a few changes: We took the wall down in the kitchen and made the island bigger.
We also removed the capped wall at the entry way and turned bedroom 4 into a den with a cased opening on the side of the great room, instead of a hallway door. In the owner's suite, we decided to put the entry to the closet in the bathroom. With a bathroom entry, Kyle is able to get dressed in the morning without waking me up ;) I also had a combo bath/shower put in because I HAVE to takes baths!

We were SUPER HAPPY with the price of this home! I did decide to upgrade the cabinets and carpet because the standard was not very impressive. The cabinet upgrade cost about $4000 and the one-level carpet upgrade was cost $1000.
In my opinion, it was cheaper to upgrade the cabinets now instead of having to remodel several years down the road. Kitchens are expensive!

Ideally, I wanted hardwood flooring throughout the house but it was not working with our budget. For now, we'll have carpet  and vinyl on the floors.

Once we signed the contract it was on to bank approval...Stay tuned!