Mother Of All Whore Threads Non-VIP Edition v.1

bauer311

bauer311

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Gitrdone42 said:
Does anyone in here have experience with having a house built? The wife and I are about to start the process since we haven't been able to find the house we want. Just looking to see if anyone has any tips on things to ask for or stay away from that you normally wouldn't think about.
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Be patient is the biggest advice i can offer you on building a house. mySick kinda nailed it. Depending on what the builder offers as standard and what is considered an upgrade, the price can add up quick. But if it's gonna be your forever home, then you can just go with the cheaper stuff for now and upgrade when it's time to replace, like carpet floor instance. If you can, check on the house often as possible. They had installed the wrong cabinets and wer had to get that situated, but the builder was already working the issue. Some things will look crazy after building starts, but will get worked out by closing, so don't be surprised if you see a few scrapes on the walls or nail holes in trim not filled and painted until about two weeks before closing when they do the finish work. They'll touch up all the walls and trim and tie up all that crazy looking stuff. It's a wild process, but we're super excited now that closing day is here tomorrow. Just keep open communication with your realtor, loan officer and the builder and things should go pretty smooth. Feel free to ask me anything and I'll answer your question the best i can.
 
mySIck

mySIck

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Gitrdone42 said:
Yeah I know exactly what you mean. I'd love to do it myself but it would also take me forever. I'm too precise with things being a machinist. It's hard to do anything with carpentry because I try to make it too perfect. We are looking at building about a 2200-2300 square feet house with a 3 car garage on about an acre of land. When we started looking we wanted to stay around $200k but we are looking at about $260-270k now.
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That is the same with us. It always seems like every house we find there is something we always hate. We always find a house with the perfect kitchen but horrible bedrooms or bathroom.
 
Gitrdone42

Gitrdone42

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webby said:
It's significantly more complex to get approved for a truly custom home build. The bank usually wants a larger percentage of the land/home value up front as collateral to get approval. The number of banks that will approve construction loans is also a lot less. I called a lot of banks in various cities, and I was only able to find 2 banks, (1 was a credit union) that even did new construction loans (post the last house market crash). They don't want the liability or the extra work that is involved in weekly/monthly cash draws that the builder requires. They have to constantly verify the work that is being done, so that they do not give out too much to the builder during the process. The bank does that to protect themselves on how they pay out for the work that has been done on the loan. Then the bank has to constantly issue new mortgage bills to the home owner while it's under construction. So, say the builder has done 50k worth of work...then the bank will be sending you a mortgage payment as if you had a 50k house. Next month you may have a mortgage payment as if the house was worth 70k, and so on till you have a finished house. It's a lot of additional work for them to deal with, so a lot of banks won't touch new construction loans.

Definitely do a lot of research into the builder you choose. Look at a lot of reviews, and ask for references for homes they've built. Call those past home owners and see how their build went. Find out if it went long, if it went over budget, what issues they had and so on. I'd at least talk to a handful from each builder you're looking at doing the work. https://www.houzz.com/professionals/home-builders houzz is another resource for looking at what a builder in the area may have already built to give you ideas. See if any of them have won local awards and so on.
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We have found a builder that we like. He's currently building several houses in a neighborhood but not exactly what we want. I've seen how every phase has gone by looking at the ones being built at different stages. I feel really comfortable with this guy. He has agreed to build for us with just a $5k down payment. We just have to be able to close on it within 30 days of completion or he can sell it to someone else and we lose the deposit. We will have to have our current home sold before then also but technically we were approved for enough to be able to have two mortgages.
 
bauer311

bauer311

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Yeah, he seems legit! I did a va loan, so i think we put down $1k, but other than that, the appraisal was the only sketchy part. Worked out in our favor at $5k under listing price, but things could have gone sour if we had a stingy builder. Fortunately, they just agreed to the lower price and we are good now.
 
webby

webby

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I'm impressed with the detail in the crown moulding in the entry, and the box details in some of the rooms etc. It's a lot of additional time and labor to do those details.
 
Gitrdone42

Gitrdone42

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webby said:



I'm impressed with the detail in the crown moulding in the entry, and the box details in some of the rooms etc. It's a lot of additional time and labor to do those details.
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That's the things that we really liked about it. He also uses every possible inch of space with closets and such.
 
bootyluvr

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:wave: Morning

Happy Friday :woot:

@ron v - it's cooler today (mid-80's compared to mid-upper 90's) but the humidity is still here I think until tomorrow.
 
bauer311

bauer311

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Closing day is finally here!

I may have gotten in trouble with the boss a bit on this one... somehow they weren't tracking my leave request for closing today...got a lil scolding over the phone. Considering that my email account just got up last week, i guess there was a misunderstanding about that and my surgery dates. Such is life.

Happy Friday fam!
 
ron v

ron v

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I’ve been night shift so I’ve been sleeping like 3-4 hours a couple times a day. **** sux. Glad to be back on days Monday.
 
ron v

ron v

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That engine bay is clean
 
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