It’s been two (long) weeks since I gave my last update on the house, and the one thing in our way – getting to closing!  HomeStreet has taken SO LONG to get us to closing, but we’re finally there.  We (as individuals) were completely approved by underwriting, so that wasn’t holding us up, but there were two things on the build that were.

The first was the type of contract we had set-up with Ruttan Construction.  We agreed to a cost plus fixed fee contract (which took forever to negotiate), but HomeStreet doesn’t like that set-up and required us to make an amendment to our contract to basically say that the contracted amount is a guaranteed maximum cost and is sufficient to provide the minimum quality and quantity of materials outlined in our plans & specs.  This doesn’t mean that we can’t have change orders and go over our budgeted amount, but it means that we can build the house for the amount specified (to a minimum level…obviously that can be done).  To wrap up that requirement we and Ruttan had to sign the amendment and then we were fine.

The second thing that HomeStreet didn’t like is that we need a private well for a water source and that the well is not already in place.  Our loan officer had to do a bunch of research with the County to prove that there has never been a private well applied for in Western Washington that didn’t have potable water.  All of that paperwork was sent to the head guys at HomeStreet and they finally gave their approval of the loan. The only caveat is that they won’t fund our first draw without the well being installed and the testing results back.  We were told on Monday that the private well was approved by their VPs, but it still took the remainder of the week to get it passed and through all of the document controls and underwriting.

Finally today was the day though – we finally had everything approved.  And to make things go through even faster, we signed papers at about 10pm tonight!  Our loan officer came to our house and we signed them on the kitchen table.  Break out the bubbly…and we did…our loan officer actually brought us a bottle of French Champagne!  We’re officially funded and going to begin construction!!