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.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yay! What a relief.

Anonymous said...

Hallelujah! Very pleased to have been a witness to this wonderful undertaking. So proud of you--especially when I think back to our days at Tufts when we were all basically unformed lumps sitting about strumming our guitars. Judith

Anonymous said...

Congrats. I stumbled on this blog a few months ago and am impressed.

Tho, if you want to get things done, it's good to have deadlines. Projects that have open dates are the mother of all 16-year procrastinations.

At the time, the stresses seem like too much, but years later you'll remember it being easier than it was and wondering how you ever got all done that needed to get done. That's the key: it needed to get done. As they say, when someone puts a gun to your head and says 'Dance!' you dance.

Good luck.

Duncan Bloor said...

Which bank are you with? I'm in the middle of sorting finances for my first self build project and didn't have a clue about all this!

I've tried www.self-builder.com as a starting point and that seems quite helpful but didn't understand that you can't get a mortgage until it's finished! Back to the research for me!

Anonymous said...

We are trying to convert a barn into a house. Our problems is trying to get a loan to buy the property and convert the existing barn. We cannot find anyone who will finance the project. We only need about $100,000 to buy the 5 acres with barn and do most of the conversion. We've talked to several banks and our realitors mortgage people. They do not want to do a construction loan nor a renovation loan. Who does??? Can you help?
martysusan2@juno.com.