So, the mortgage lender lady finally calls me back......and says I have good news and bad news. The good news is that we qualify for the higher amount the house ended up being estimated at. The bad news? Well, they figured out the address of our property and realized it is 80 miles outside of their lending area radius! are you kidding me? When I told her 6 weeks ago or whenever it was, that we put an offer on the land, where it was (the town name), she didn't think to check that? So, now we have to start all over getting approved for a loan. Doesn't do me a lot of good, with her "good news" does it? But she says that just means if they approved it, so will another bank. ok. we'll see....
So, not exactly sure what we are doing....the builder keeps totally confusing us, as he keeps saying he wants to give the bank a higher estimate of costs (than it will actually cost) so it will appraise higher. Well, the bank wants 20% cash as a down payment. Where we are at with numbers right now is about exactly that we will have the 20% to give them. If we give the bank an even higher number, then we need to have even more cash to give the bank for the down payment. He's making no sense to me. He keeps making it sound like if we get a higher appraisal, that usually helps people out with more equity towards their down payment.
If we can swing this, it will probably just be better in the long run,
since this bank and the builder work a lot together. Things will
probably go much smoother. I just don't need the additional delay of
going through the approval process again.
And on top of that I'm dealing with a hubby who is on a rant. He bought a used car trailer last summer. Has spent the past year fixing it up. Even bought some nice brand new high quality straps (that we'll need to use to move an old t-bird car we have). A friend of his just called and asked to borrow the trailer. DH hasn't even gotten to use it yet! Then the guy says "oh, and you have straps too, right?" So, DH's brand new straps are going to get all dirty and greasy before he even gets to use them. I told him just to say NO. But he can't and then bitches that he gets used and taken advantage of.......
They always say building a house usually ends up costing about 30 percent more than they tell you it will. Sounds to me like the builder is trying to cover his bases so that when the house building does cost more than he quoted you, the money will be there to pay him. Not saying he's not honest, just that he knows what he's doing.
ReplyDeleteyes, I was thinking that too, so wasn't too concerned and figured that was probably why it was higher. DH did ask him if we could still plan on lots of overages with this new number he gave us and he said no, not at all.
DeleteWhen we built our house, we had about 12% in overages,$25,000 that we had to come up with which is pretty low for overages compared to a lot of my friends who have built. Some of the overages we had were extra fill, upgrading our furnace, extra can lights, wiring our generator, overages for kitchen cabinets, and upgrading our doors. I don't regret any of the items we changed but some of the things were completely out of our control like the fill. Have you already picked our your kitchen, flooring, appliances, trim, doors and windows? Those seem to be common areas that people go over.
ReplyDeleteWith our construction loan, they went on whatever was less, the appraisal or our acquisition costs. So if the appraisal would have been way higher but we only had x into it, they would have went with X.
Building was really stressful. We drank every night and I had nightmares all the time about running out of money. But we love our house and it's been well worth it for us.
I don't drink, but I'm thinking I might have to start LOL. Way toooo stressful, all this is. I wake up every morning in a cold sweat. We are hoping at a minimum we come in at budget, but are really trying for under, as we will be able to do some of the stuff ourselves. Living on site and DH not working, he will have every day (that he feels well enough) to help out and the builder said whatever he can do he'll use him. We already plan to buy all our appliances with cash. I can paint the rooms (though I don't want to do the great room). I have a connection with the lighting at like half or less of retail cost. If for some reason the house costs start escalating we will just do less finish inside the shop. I already told DH that there will be no big upgrades, period! It will be a beautiful house when done and I know we will love it for the rest of our lives.
Deleteand to answer your question on if we've picked out everything yet...not specifically. I have general ideas of what we'll use. Egineered hardwood or a really good laminate thru most of house, just a good stone look vinyl flooring in baths and laundry/mud room. I have a style/color of kitchen cabinets I like. Will do stainless appliances. The fridge/stove/dw we put in this house and are nice, cost less than $2000 total. Other than that, we haven't gotten that far yet. I'll probably put carpet in the 2 guest bedrooms.
DeleteI have been reading and just wanted to clarify...so your payment will be around $2700-$2800 per month for sure? And that is a 15 year mortgage that will be paid off by what age?
ReplyDeleteJust curious, as we are in a higher income bracket as well (we live off salary and try not to even touch any huge guaranteed bonuses) and our mortgage payment is about $1570 on a $360K house we bought 5.5 years ago (now is 10 years old and we cash flow one large upgrade a year.) House is now worth about $385K...we have 15 year mortgage but hoping to pay off sooner.
I guess my question is, does that high of a mortgage payment worry you just in case anything happens? And I know you are buying land, but none of that I thought includes landscaping, irrigation, deck or concrete patio etc or a finished basement.
You seem to be on top of things and I hope the rest goes as smoothly as possible for you!
that is the mtg payment I will pay to get it paid off in about 16 years - when I plan to retire at the earliest.. but if worse comes to worse for a time, we can make the lower payment (based that it's a 30 yr mtg rate) while we get thru the rough patch. We have absolutely no other debt. we didn't design a floor plan with a basement, and it does include front porch and back covered patio, and concrete pads in front of garage and shop. Landscaping we will do on our own as we go along, we love doing landscaping and I think we did a really good job with our current home on our landscaping and didn't spend much. Not sure if I mentioned but I do not include my bonus in my monthly budget, either.
DeleteI have a question.
ReplyDeleteIf your builder gets the house/land appraised at a higher price, wouldn't that increase your property taxes?
Just a thought...
as far as I know county property appraisals are not the same as appraisals done by banks. The county here has our property appraised at way lower than we sold it for. It appears to be that way there too. I think the county has the lots appraised for like half what all the people bought them for 10 years ago.
Delete