Tortoise Hollow

I have been a bit of a slacker about updating but it is mostly because there is so very little to tell.  We are still pursuing financing through a local credit union, but it is taking time.  Because the credit union requires us to use an ‘approved’ builder, our builder has to go through their approval process.  He has turned in all of the tons of documents that they wanted from him except one, a financial statement, which his bookkeeper has been preparing.  

Our builder builds custom homes as a side job and because of this his projects are sometimes designed to pay him in the later installments.  He wanted to wait a week or two for a certain disbursement of funds to make it to his account in order for the financial statement to present him in the most positive light to the credit union.  His bookkeeper was supposed to have the statement done at some point last week, so hopefully she came through.  Once he submits that statement it should be a matter of only a few days before he is approved.

I really hope that things can start to move in a forward direction.  It has been so long now that it is easy to lose focus on our goal.  I can’t believe it has been almost two and a half years now.  But then, I keep saying that.

Our builder was over tonight to resign some documents that needed to be refreshed before we try for a mortgage with the credit union as planned. He has turned in all of the required documents to get accepted on the credit union’s approved list of builders, except the financial statement which is being prepared by his book keeper.

Next week we are going to see if we can start the application process, while his documents are being reviewed. We want to get as much as we can done as quickly as possible in order to avoid any further delays. Now I’d like to light a fire under someone’s ass to get this thing moving!

Well I don’t have a whole lot of new news this week, but we are still pursuing the credit union angle to get a mortgage.  One of the biggest challenges is going to one of the same ones we faced before- we can get a 90% loan-to-value mortgage, but it would require private mortgage insurance.  None of the private mortgage insurance companies will write a policy for us- I heard they are no longer doing any in this county.  I don’t know if that is true or not.  

So that leaves us with getting an 80% loan-to-value mortgage and ponying up the rest of the cash ourselves. This money we do not have, after two and a half years of being bled dry by every regulatory agency that could get their hooks in us.  Consider this also:  the appraised value of the house is going to be well below what it costs to build it because nothing is selling.  Then, we can only get 80% of that number.  The cards are stacked against us in nearly every way possible.

We do have a plan, though.  Our builder came by on Wednesday and we did some more number crunching.  We cut drastically in many areas of the house, wiping out things such as French doors, a tankless water heater, most of the inside of the workshop, stone countertops, etc.  Then we decided to list out on the cost sheet as line items all of the costs for things we have already paid. That way, as part of our 20% contribution to the project we can count the costs we have incurred to permit the land and hold it for as long as it took to do so.  When we added all of everything we have already paid up, we came to $70,897.76.  That is still not as much as we need to make up our 20% of the project, but we should be able to use some of the equity we have in the land as well, depending upon how the new appraisal comes in (we have an appraisal from the mortgage broker, but it is a few months old now, and the banks always seem to want their own, done by their appraisers).

Right now we are still waiting for our builder to be approved by the credit union, which entails him submitting about ten pages of credentials, past project summaries, etc.  As soon as we get the word that he has been approved, we will push forward with applying for the mortgage. Until then, since we already know what the parameters are for the mortgage, it is a good time for us to make sure all of the numbers in all of the little columns are going to add up in a way that pleases the underwriters.  We are going to make everything work so perfectly that the mortgage will just glide through underwriting.  That is our only hope of this deal working out.

Fingers crossed and lots of prayers!

On Friday, I called the Credit Union to see if there was any possibility of getting a construction loan through them. The loan officer I talked to said that she had not gotten the message I had left on Wednesday, so I am glad I called.

From what she said, it looks like the Credit Union could be a real possibility. They did not engage in predatory lending like so many of the banks did, and therefore are not having the funding problems that the banks are. I am hoping we can work something out and quickly. The only problem with that is that they are one of very few lenders in the area that are still closing loans, so they are quite busy.

We shall see what the week ahead has in store for us; hopefully it is good news.

Yesterday I went in to a local credit union to inquire about construction loans.  The girl there assured me that they do them, and that they were currently doing them.  She took all my information and said that she would have the loan officer call me.  

I was trying not to get my hopes up, but it is hard to do when there is some glimmer of a possibility.  We want so much to get started- to get anything done, after almost two and a half years.

The loan officer was supposed to call me today, and I heard nothing.  I hope that isn’t a bad sign, but I fear it is. Please God, throw us a bone, for a change.

We finally got an update this afternoon on how our mortgage underwriting was going. Even though we have lowered the amount we are asking to borrow, our lender is balking at our debt ratio, which is still fairly low even though it includes our current house along with the amount we will be paying per month on the new mortgage. We are planning to rent this house out after we move, because the housing market is crap, and we don’t want to give our house away. Renting it out for a few years will allow time for the market to recover. They had not figured in the amount we could get for rent for the house in doing the calculations, and we are not sure that they will accept that logic. We have a few more tricks up our sleeves, but the options are dwindling rapidly.

The other problem is, now that we have a lender that might be interested, our appraisal is too old, so they want it redone. I fear that it will come in even lower than before, and then we will be back to square one. The hits just keep on coming. Sometimes I really feel that we will never get this house built and that we will be stuck in our horrid neighborhood forever listening to our POS neighbors cackle into the wee hours of the morning and smelling the nasty cigar smoke that wafts over from their back porch. What a horrible thought.

It seems that lenders should change their names from “lenders” to “rejectors” because they are certainly not interested in lending to anyone right now. Our mortgage broker said that it is a very strange time- that he could turn in the paperwork for a “perfect mortgage,” one that was well within the loan to value, borrowers with excellent credit, etc. and still they would sometimes not get past underwriting. The underwriters would just never get back to him; they are all running scared. That, to me is stupid and ridiculous. How do the mortgage companies expect to stay in business if they won’t lend to ANYONE? No wonder the housing market sucks; no one can get the mortgage they need to buy anything. There is no end in sight unless things change, either.

The idiot mortgage companies and their stupid ass sub-prime loans got themselves into a huge mess, and now Andy and I, with near perfect credit, can’t seem to get a mortgage to save our lives. I don’t see what they are so worried about- they are going to be bailed out of their financial woes by the government. We, on the other hand, have no one to help us with funding, even though it was local government that put us in this predicament by costing us a small fortune and then delaying us so long that the market fell apart in the process.

I want to scream and strangle someone all at the same time. What has happened to this country and will things ever return to normal? I truly can’t see how they could at this point.

Tuesday evening I got an email from our mortgage broker. He was finally ready for us to resubmit all of our documents. It has been so long since we started to try to get financing, that we have had to submit all new pay stubs, bank statements, etc. We originally provided all of that stuff back in August, then again in November after we were delayed further. Hopefully this will be the last time we have to do so.

I sent pdf files of everything that night, and then yesterday I got an informational email from my credit monitoring that my credit report had been accessed. I looked at the report and it was the mortgage company, so that is a good sign that we are getting close- they pulled my report for underwriting the mortgage.

We worked with our builder to manipulate the numbers to make them work with only a minimum out of pocket for us. We still aren’t sure how much we will have to bring to the table, but it should be much less than we were looking at before. Cross all your fingers and toes and pray that we get to closing day soon and everything will go smoothly. We are so ready to start construction. As it is it doesn’t look good for us to be able to move in by Christmas, but it might still be possible. I sure hope so. That would be the best Christmas present ever.

We are still waiting to hear back from our mortgage broker on a 90% mortgage now that we have gone and “adjusted” some numbers with our builder in order to make things work. It seems like things take an inexplicable amount of time to get going.

We haven’t heard from him in about two weeks now, and I am starting to think that it is because he can’t even get us a 90% loan to value mortgage. I don’t know why else he would be avoiding us, and my calls and emails have gone unanswered.

This whole thing sucks. I am so sick and tired of having to worry about this shit every day of my life. I just want to start construction for fuck’s sake. *pulling out hair*