I'm writing this blog for two reasons. One, I want to be able to remember all of this. Two, I have so many questions about what is next, whats the timeline etc. that I can't find answers to and I am getting step by step stuff along the way from our builder and all that but I am a planner and they can't tell me anything too far out because they risk not being able to follow through due to unforeseen events and I get that but hopefully this could help someone else who is in a similar situation at some point in the future. My focus will be mostly on timelines as price can change from location to location and varies over time and as markets change.
My wife and I purchased a 1 acre plot of land in a new subdivision in June of 2019. We had hoped to save up some money and build a custom home on the lot at some point in the future, likely several years down the line. Well, the housing market took off in 2020 despite the pandemic and we had an opportunity to sell our home and make a profit. We decided to sell over the July 4th weekend. We listed our home on August 6th and by August 8th we were under contract. The house closed on September 21st and we moved around the corner to a rental. With that money and the land, which we owned outright, we had enough to get going on the construction.
Last summer, after buying the land, we had interviewed several custom home builders in our area and decided to go with SHC. They had built homes we liked, were personable and had great references. We contacted them in early August, after our home was under contract, and we set up a time to meet with Katie (Co-owner) and Brint (Draftsman/Design Company) to do some planning.
We had some ideas and after a few meetings with Katie and Brint he had drawn up some floor plans that we really liked. We had to put down 50% of what he anticipated our total cost for drawings would be and he put them into CAD. Putting the hand drawings into CAD took a few weeks and we ended up making mild modifications from there. Soils testing was done to help from a planning perspective and it was fun seeing holes on our dirt for a few days until they filled them back in.
Small tweaks in the design were relatively easy at that point and by late October we had our final designs, site plans and we paid the remainder of our bill off to Brint. When all was said and done the house has a 4 car garage and a total livable square footage of just under 5,300 feet. We have a large family with 5 kids so, though we felt bad about how big it was at first, after living in a small rental for a few months we've decided that we are not being too extravagant and that we will use all the house we are planning on building.We met again with Katie and Justin (Co-owner) and discussed some final items. We did a basic spec sheet and came up with things we wanted or did not want in and out of the house. She sent the project out to bid to her subcontractors by the end of October and we started talking with the bank. In the meantime the site was staked out and I sent them a VERY basic idea of how we expect to landscape our yard so the septic system could be planned out. That project was just sent back to us last week and looks great.
We were pre-approved for the construction loan relatively quickly and the bid came back from the subcontractors a few weeks before Thanksgiving. We contacted the insurance company to get everything lined up for the loan and as of now the loan is scheduled to close on December 11th (apparently, with all the housing getting appraisals right now is taking 5-6 weeks and that is what we are waiting on). We are waiting for final engineering to be done and hoping to start moving dirt ASAP after the loan closes.
