Well its time for us to start clearing the land! After finding out that we have 15 more feet on the side of the property its just that much more for us to clear! yuck! Just kidding! We are actually super excited about this revelation! Since we are fencing off the whole property and adding a gate up front I have been super worried about looking out of the windows on the sides of the house and seeing... fence. Ew. Nope, not anymore we get to have actual plants and such now! Everything with a pink flag around it is set to be removed... this is a total of 20 trees. Todd told us that this was going to cost us anywhere from $12,000 to $2,000 and we needed to keep our fingers crossed. Who knew that cutting down trees was so expensive!? Not only do they need to cut down these trees but they need to grind and remove the stumps as well... needless to say we will be selling firewood for the next few years to make some of this money back! haha! Kinda joking... kinda not...
Again, dont worry we will be more than compensating down the road with new plants, trees, flowers, and other misc landscaping. Thanks to my father I learned a lot over the years and cant wait to hit up the local growers and get to planting! I also have plans for a garden... my lovely garden box that The Hubs made for me when we first started dating is sadly sitting empty in the garage. :(
Back to what I was saying, we did get quite a few quotes for the land clearing and all I can say is thankfully we did not hit the 12k mark! Woo! Mini celebration!
With a construction mortgage you have to come out of pocket on about 25% of what you would like to get a loan on... this can include: Land clearing, Contractors fees, Architect fees, Survey Fees, Sewage survey, and so on and so forth. Just posting this so that if you decide to build on your own land... you should just know that the land itself probably isnt down payment enough for a bank anymore. Ew and more Ew to this one. Sucks that we have to come out of pocket this much before hand but glad we are prepared.
On a lighter note! I dropped off the final check to Jason our Architect yesterday! Do you know what this means?! Do you?! THIS MEANS WE GET TO FILE FOR OUR BUILDING PERMITS! <insert happy dance>
Yes Ladies and Gents, if all goes as planned we will be breaking ground very soon! This puts a swarm of little butterflies in my stomach! This isnt like your normal cookie cutter builders special house that you found in some neighborhood... this is our dream! This is excitement kept me from tearing my neighbors head off with my bare hands after he took a leaf blower to his "yard" and covered my white dog in dirt and leaves while he was peeing. Let me be clear that the word yard is used very loosely... he has a busted driveway and stupid oak trees. The landlord cut all the branches off before we moved in so we wouldnt have to deal with his leaves... but thankfully he blew them all into our yard! They just drove away so I'm about to bust out the blower myself and give them back to my very giving neighbor. If I knew where his hose hook up was I'd use that and wash my little white dog with his water too!
6 more months. 6 more months. 6 more months.
I think the dogs will soon join us in this chant too... they are hating being in this house...
well dont look at them right now... you couldnt tell.
Have I mentioned yet how much this oven sucks? I'm sure that my baby chicken that I am cooking right now will take a good 2 1/2 hours... waaaay more than its used to. grr. time to go baste it again.... talk to you soon!
You mention land clearing going towards the % you have to put down towards a construction loan. Do you just show the invoice and payment for this to the bank? Do you know? We just bought property recently and are paying $10K to have 2 acres and a long driveway cut with asphalt millings on top. Today it occurred to me that maybe there was a way to count this out-of-pocket money towards our down payment. After doing a google search, I came across your blog. Any insight you have would be great.
ReplyDeleteHi there! Yes we did show them all of this but you want to make sure that you mention it to them ahead of time. Unfortunately they try and get more cash out of pocket from you so push really hard to have this included. The land cleaning and the asphalt you are having done should add an immense amount of vault to the property. Yo might even have to have someone come out for it so the sooner the better. Banks will try and get you at any turn so everything you have done on this property they need to see. Fencing, site cleaning, surveys, it all helps! Good luck and let me know how it's going!
DeleteThanks so much! I was contemplating having a new survey done once the clearing and driveway are finished, but wasn't sure if I should. I appreciate your response! We will be emailing the credit union in the next day or so to see if there's a way to include the out-of-pocket cost of those improvements!
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