These past couple of weeks have been pretty busy!  We sold our home and it closed on March 31^st…under 30 days.  So that meant we had to be out of the house and moved into our rental home on the weekend prior.  But we did it – got all moved in on March 28^th & 29^th.  With help from a moving company (Moving Help) for the heavy lifting and my Aunt Nancy for her mad-unpacking skills, things are looking pretty good for us as we’ve already settled into the new home.  So we’re officially non-home owners any longer!  Feels so strange not to really care about the home we’re living in; especially knowing that it’s for less than a year.  We haven’t put up any art or pictures and I’m not even sure that we will!  The house has been great though and our boys have already met kids to play with in the neighborhood.  Love that!

For our build, we’ve been working for the past few weeks with the lender getting all of our paperwork turned in.  The bank needs to have everything they normally require for lending (W2’s, bank statements, etc, in addition to things about what we’re building – our contract, budget, scope, plans, etc).  They then pass all the build information on to an appraiser who determines a “future appraised value” of the home.  And that value is what the banks end up lending on.  Most banks I found do an 80% loan to value.  So if your home’s future appraised value will be $1M once the construction is finished, they will lend you up to 80% of that, or $800,000 for the construction.  If your contract amount with the builder is more than that, they you’ll need to come up with the remainder in cash at closing.

We’ve hit a bit of a speedbump with our lender though.  At first we were going to use Banner Bank – a friend recommended them, and although the loan officer was great, he ended up changing the terms of the loan at the last minute (after we had already paid $550 for the appraisal, ugh).  He wanted to charge an origination fee of $7,500.  Although that might not sound too bad, this isn’t a loan that we’re keeping forever – at most we’ll only have it for a year, and then refinance once the construction is done.  So at this point we’re going through the whole process again with HomeStreet Bank.  I’ve been talking with the loan officer there for about a year now (off and on) asking lending questions and making sure we’re on track with our savings.   He’s been great and says that he can close by the end of the month (which was the same time frame as Banner Bank).  And he’s even waiving the appraisal fee!  His rate is the same as at Banner Bank too, and he doesn’t charge any origination points.  So far so good!  He has just submitted everything for the appraiser, put a rush order on it, and we should be hearing back with what the future appraised value is by Monday.  Fingers crossed it came in the same (or higher) as the appraisal from Banner Bank!  If not, we may end up actually going back to Banner and we would have wasted a few weeks in the process ugh.  I guess its Banner Bank vs. HomeStreet!

30-day Loan Process Schedule

In case you’re wondering, here’s been our schedule working through the loan process (and what it’s estimated to be):

April 1-2: Turn in initial paperwork from Owner & Builder to Bank

April 3-5: Receive and sign Good Faith Estimate and lender’s underwriting paperwork

April 6-7: Revised budget based on a last minute design change (oops!)

April 8-13: Order Appraisal & Appraisal Time

April 14: Appraisal Completed

April 15-22: Underwriting

April 23-28: Escrow

April 29: Signing at Escrow

April 30: Closing…construction can officially begin!