Groundbreaking News

We are well on our way to becoming homeowners! On Friday we closed on the construction loan, which now allows the building to begin. And this morning the builder began having the lot cleared. Hooray!!

As a recap, here is a summary of things to do when building a home:

• Find a reliable and high quality home builder, Jason Marek of JMV Custom Homes, to be specific.


• Meet with said builder 100+ times and ask questions about the whole process until you feel comfortable with the decision.


• During these meetings, talk over all the details of the floorplan you want so that when building actually begins, you have already decided the big things, and it won't cost you later during building to move a wall because now you want this room over there...


• Find a mortgage lender you are comfortable with, who presents themselves well, and most importantly, who can actually explain things to you in a clear way that someone with two college degrees can understand. Seriously folks, there are a LOT of people employed in the financing business who cannot explain something as simple as how they calculated a particular number on a form. Don't let their job title fool you.


• Sign a contract with the builder with a list of all the specs you and he agreed would be included in the house - the more detailed the better. It's very easy to forget what's "standard" after a week.


• Sign a contract with the seller of the property lot agreeing to buy the lot assuming you receive financing approval.


• Receive a good faith estimate from the construction loan lender recommended by the mortage lender person you previously selected. NOTE that the construction loan lender will fib on the dollar amounts quoted to you on the estimate. What does that mean? It means that when they have already confirmed that a particular fee (that is set by the state and cannot change) is $X, they will tell you that the fee costs $X+Y to cover their financing behinds and to make them look like they "saved you all this money" when you actually end up paying $X. Just remember, the lender has nothing to do with most of the closing cost fees and their amounts - most amounts are set by the state. The only fees the bank has control over is the "origination fees."


• Receive the good faith estimate at least 10 business days after submitting a loan application...translated, receive it on the 11th business day and then be expected to be ok with the "offer valid through" yesterday. "Trust" that they will not rescind this offer of good faith. Or, you can refuse to sign this estimate and wait until after you close on the construction loan and made sure they were not going to change anything in the offer. If they can pre-date their estimate, why can't we pre-date our signature?


• Receive the HUD-1 form at least 24 hours prior to your date and time of closing. Then spend the night before your 9:00am closing reading the 55-page document full of legal jargon projected on your TV and slowly go out of your mind...I mean, read every word and clearly understand what it means. Seriously though, if you don't understand something, write your questions down and ask them at closing until you're satisfied.


• And finally, sign your name and initial about 2,000 times on these forms. It's worth your hand deforming into "the claw" because now it's official, and you're house can now start to be built!


• Take lots and lots of pictures! We plan to take a picture from the same place every time to make a flip book time-lapse sort of thing.

Stay tuned!