Saturday, February 02, 2008

Bye-Bye Construction Loan, Hello Mortgage

I have to admit, I'm stunned. I had concocted this brilliant offensive stragegy in my head that I was going to lay on the "faceless names" at the Bank. I had all my most cogent arguments crafted and ready to lay on them concerning why they should deem Bare Hill Barn "complete" and release the remainder of our loan. I was not terribly optimistic. At least I had hoped that MAYBE they would cut us a break on the amount of the penalty they were going to lay on us for going over the construction period (THEIR fault, in my opinion). WEll, I got a phone call out of the blue from "I hope you have a marvelous day" saying the check was in the mail. Excuse me? I thought you just said the check was in the mail. Sure enough, FedEx showed up the next day with a big fat check. So, with that, we're done. (Sort of). Although there are still some important details to hammer out, like interest rates (thank you Ben Bernanke!) and the terms of out mortgage. But really, this is a huge step and psychologically it feels amazing. Up until that phone call I was under serious pressure: finish some very substantial work on the house - which I have NO time to do - all the while being fined for every day we go over the construction period. Now I'm free to stress out WHEN AND HOW I WANT TO, not when some BANK tells me to! Sheesh.