2-6-11 Sunday (Sign, Sealed, And Future Delivery)

I created a Facebook photo album that I’ll add “all things new house related’ to.  It’s a great place to have all our photos so that our Facebook non-blog reader friends and family can see what’s going on.  What I like about Facebook is that you don’t  need to have a Facebook account to view this (click here) Facebook photo album.

It’s going to be 7 months from now for this house to be built.  With just a mere $1,000 deposit, there’s some pros and cons.  If something goes wrong, we can walk away and forfeit a thousand.  If something happens to our financing (like jobs) between now and closing, we could potentially not be able to “afford” this home in NACA’s eyes.  Sigh…we’ll just think positively.

Jim had bought some Groupon $10 for $20 worth of food to the Something Classic Café several weeks ago so today we redeemed it for lunch.  The food was good.  (Just pretend I’m not dieting).  To achieve the $20 required total, Jim got a large slice of carrot cake for us to share.  It was pretty much flavorless.  Jim didn’t care for it either.  We actually ate outside.  It was gorgeous out.  Slightly chilly, but we moved to a seat directly in the sun.  THEN we had to wear our sunglasses.  It was a project but worth it.

With little time to spare, we made it over to the Adams Homes sales office to sign the contract today!

After all the explanations of the fine print were over, we toured a nearly completed Adams Home that is HUGE.  We just wanted to see it for the hell of it.  I think it was this one:

3191 heated air.  It’s monstrous.  I did get a couple of photos of 2 things that this home had that we’re getting:

Above: These are the cabinets we chose.

Above: Here’s another photo of the iron spindles.  The wood hand rail and base will get stained to match the wood floors.  This house is still under construction.  These future owner’s purchased the entire staircase done in these.  We’re only doing a section of it.  It’s $150 a foot!

OK, here’s some property photos.

Above: While looking straight at our future home, this is the drainage ditch to the left of the house.  It’s filled with trees and brush and will be a nice view out of the side windows.  The trees, brush, and the distance itself provides a lot of privacy.  Our property line is half this ditch. 

We can’t get a clear answer on who’s responsible for that retaining wall.  Home owner, waste water management or the like (city/county) or the homeowners association?  Our builder thinks it’s us but is still researching.  I doubt we’d be responsible for something that would affect other homeowners.  Anyone have experience with this sorta situation, please pipe in.

Above: Isn’t this photo “expected”?

Above: If you squint real hard, but not too hard, we don’t want you to accidently shit yourself, you can see Jim at the back of our lot which is the property line!

Above: Here’s Jim standing at the property line again.  Back there is Toby Creek.  The creek is pretty underwhelming but I still like it.  After all of our recent rain, it’s a little higher than our last visit.    Somewhere back behind the creek is another house.  We can barely see it in person, never mind the photo.

Above: Toby Creek.  More like a puddle with moving water.

Above: This marshy area across the street from us complete with cat tails.  We think they’d eventually fill it in and build but the lot isn’t marked for sale.  We were told there aren’t plans for development on it at this point.  This wasn’t the selling point of the lot so we don’t care.

Above: While leaving the development – 2 people on horses!  The road next to the development entrance is a nice winding road with lots of private driveways and big properties off of it.  The road is “Rocky River”.

I’m so sure Jim and I have been somewhat of a pain in the ass with our salesperson, Michelle.  Jim  and I joked that she was probably thinking, “if they’re gonna change so much, why build this model or even with Adams?”  I had to ask if we were her most difficult customers.  She said, “the ones who don’t speak English that well are more difficult.”  SCORE!  We win!  We’re only second to those who have language difficulties.  We’ll surely be a source of stores for her for years to come…

Out of boredom, after the contract signing, we went to Home Depot.  We walked around aimlessly looking at things that will be on our wishlist.  We checked out washers, dryers, refrigerators, fencing, track lighting (the cool ribbon kind), cabinetry for the utility room, etc, etc, etc.  I picked up a sample of our Wilsonart HD (Deep Star Fossil) countertops.  They didn’t carry the wood floors that we’ve gotten but I’ll check some other places.  I’d like to have a sample of that as well.  I wish builders sold a sample package of sorts.  I’d probably pay to have samples of all the stuff we selected.

2-5-11 Saturday (Negotiations)

This morning Jim and I had to volunteer for NACA.  As part of the great financing deal, we have to volunteer several times a year.  We needed to get this out of the way so that it couldn’t hold up our contract/loan procedure.  I called the volunteer office a couple of weeks ago and the soonest they had was for today… at a Spanish “Home Save” workshop.  We just have to move around some chairs, greet people, have them sign in, put away the equipment.  It was both easy and boring.  The workshop leader spoke English and many of the attendees were bilingual as well.  Easy.

It was just 3 hours of our time, most of which was hanging out in the hall way and talking.  There was no point of us sitting in the room since we didn’t understand what they were saying.  We hope to volunteer at an English speaking workshop just to see what this part of NACA is all about.  We know it’s about people who are going to lose their home.  NACA helps get them back on track through mortgage restructuring. 

Below, Jim models the NACA volunteer shirt:

The funny thing about our shirt is that the front reads, “Stop loan sharks.”  Years ago, Jim worked for CitiFinancial doing personal and home equity loans.  When he’d tell people what he did for a living, I’d jump in and say, “he’s a legalized loan shark.”

Next up we met with our realtor, Donna, and went to the Adams Homes model to negotiate and hopefully sign a contract with Michelle.  Here’s the list of upgrades we wanted.  The house price included $10,000 in “free” upgrades .  We dropped the items in red after negotiating nearly $5,000 more in free upgrades.

Item	Comment
Premium lot charge	As part of the negotiation, the builder waived this.
Plan change	Blue print redraw fee that we had to pay.
Remove bedroom #4/Study	This is what created our new family room.
HD Countertop	This is by Wilsonart.  It’s called “High Definition”.  We love it.
Coat closet off kitchen
Backyard spot light
Additional outlets	7 X $100 each.  Gotta have those Christmas lights!
Remove downstairs tub	3 bath, changing to a 2.5 bath and making room for additional closets.
Kitchen can lights	Instead of the standard fluorescent light.
Side garage door	To take out the trash but of course.
Hot tub power - 220V
Garage door opener	Yeah, we could do this after for a little cheaper but we want it done ASAP and not have to tackle a home improvement project right after closing.
Spindle railing	See photo below.  It was either a standard solid wall, a wood spindle or an iron spindle.
Additional cable/phone	2 extras.
Hard wood floors	Real hardwood!  I’m so excited.  700 sf worth, see photo below.
Fireplace	Damn drafty fireplaces suck.  We wanted one for ambiance but we keep the damn thing covered up.  Maybe we’ll add a better quality down the road.
Floor outlets	At $500 a piece, we just had this listed to “pad” the wish list for negotiation.
Irrigation	For $8,000 the grass will have to survive on it’s own for a while!
Hot tub pad	Extra concrete for the hot tub to sit on.
Side garage door to driveway sidewalk	I’m tired of walking in clay mud here!

Above: Countertop.  It’s called Deep Star Fossil.

Above: A picture of what the spindle rail will look like.  We only have 4 feet of it.  It’s expensive!

Above: Mohawk Oaktown 3” Cherry

Below is the final sketch of our floor plan:

We were at the model for over 3 hours.  We kept Michelle an extra 1/2 hour after closing.  There wasn’t enough time to sign the contract since she needs time to make the changes and then time to explain it all.  We’ll return tomorrow.  Here’s some more color choices.

Above: Exterior brick front, dark blue shutters and front door, earth tone siding and “cedar” shakes.  The color scheme is very close to the model.  The blue looks fantastic on it.  We would never have chosen that color until we saw it in action.

Above: Carpet, counter top, cabinet door, linoleum (upstairs bath and utility room) and hardwoods.

Above: Although our elevation will differ, here’s the general look.

Our salesperson, Michelle, has been wonderful.  She doesn’t even bat an eye at some of our wacky requests.  She laughs at my banter with Jim through decision making.  She even redrew the floor plans like I did except mine is better… that’s for her benefit in case she ever reads this.  I will say, I was impressed that even if she had the time to do it, that she’d spend the time on it to make sure she understood our vision.  She made sure we understood our own vision, not knowing I’d do the same.  Great minds think alike Michelle!

Tomorrow we return to the model center to sign.  I’ll try to take some better lot photos and such.

In the evening, Beth came over with some Chinese food.  We took a ride over to Crab Orchard to show her the lot.  We saw 5 deer in our neighborhood!  Awesome!

*** originally posted as 6 deer, Jim corrected me.  LOL.

2-3-11 Thursday (I Approve This Message)

Tonight is the purchase workshop thingy at NACA.   Jim and I are a little worried about the amount we were approved for.   The amount is VERY close to what we need but can fluctuate depending on homeowners insurance, home owner’s association dues and much needed flood insurance (backs up to a creek).  We can’t get a solid confirmation on flood insurance without an elevation certificate which doesn’t exist yet.  Our insurance agent says it will be $400 to $4,000 a year.  Yeah, we think the range is quite obnoxious too. 

NACA is all about making sure we’re protected and can pay.  Since we sold our Florida home in 2008, we’ve wanted to scale our financial burdens back.  We don’t want to be in the situation where one of us loses our jobs and its suddenly an “awww shit” situation.  Sure, it would be scary but we’d like to know that we have something in savings.  For so many years, we’ve lived well but paycheck to paycheck.  We don’t want that any more.  So qualifying with just Jim’s income is awesome.  It will keep us away from payments we can’t afford!  Well, that’s the plan, anyways.

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We showed up for the workshop.  It was only Jim and I.  Prior to the workshop starting, our counselor gave us our approval letter and then we bombarded him with our questions and concerns.  Jim and I found out that we have a little extra just in case.  That totally puts our fears about not being able to build this house aside.  We found out that our rate lock (4.5%) will be good during the entire construction process even though there’s no construction loan, just a $1000 deposit to the builder.  We also learned that our approved amount was calculated based on our average savings account balance and our rent payment amount and timeliness!  Very unconventional but that’s OK, it worked out for us.  NACA uses this method to calculate instead of credit.  It’s funny that we told the builder salesperson, Michelle, that' we’d have no problem qualifying with our wonderful credit scores yet they apparently had nothing to do with it.  Oh, and Bank of America will be the lender.  NACA is a broker of sorts.   If you want any additional info about NACA, check the website or ask me and I’ll get Jim to answer it.  He’s better at that “stuff” than I am.

After we received our letter, we watched a slideshow presentation by some NACA realtor guy who was helpful in explaining the entire process of contract to close.  Since it was just Jim and I there, he tailored his presentation a little more toward building.

With all that out of the way, we figured out that although it will be “tight” we can build this house.  Not tight like whether we can actually afford it but rather that we have enough pre-qualification.   The next thing will be to make sure the builder can meet us on some of the upgrades we want in both price and ability to do it. 

I’ll set up an appointment with our Realtor to meet with the builder for Saturday.  Hopefully by the end of Saturday, we’ll have a contract in hand. 

2-2-11 Wednesday (Changes)

Awesome news!  I emailed our NACA counselor this morning since he hadn’t returned our emails or calls.

“This email from Jim has went unanswered.  I called you on Monday the 31st and left a voicemail.  Your voicemail system promised a response within 24 hours.  I have not heard back from you.  Are you ill or on vacation?”

His response was that he was ill and that we were approved for $X PITI a month.  When I use NACA’s calculator to figure out the payments into a total purchase price, it’s what we need to build that house!  I’m so excited but I can’t tell Jim until later since he’s in training at work.  I’m gonna text him.

We’re still going back and forth with the builder, salesperson Michelle, about changes and upgrades.  Adams Homes is NOT a custom builder so there will be sacrifices.  Our last new home build in FL was by Oyster Bay Homes and we were so happy with them.  We built something similar to this. 

They made any change we wanted.  We could have things like flooring done by whomever we wanted.  We simply set up an allowance in the price of the house and then submitted receipts to the builder for reimbursement.  It was awesome.

Yes, I will give you more photos and details once we’ve signed the contract.  For now, if you want to see the plans again, go here to this blog entry.  I edited that post with a better, clearer floor plan scan.  So if it was hard to read the other day, take a reading course try it now.  Once again, if everything is confirmed, contract in place, I will post our “changed” floor plan.

1-31-11 Monday (Gassy Meats)

Monday.  What’d I do Monday?  I went grocery shopping at Walmart!  I know, a surprise, right?  I did save about $10 with coupons!  Ever since we got a great deal on the weekend paper, I’ve been clipping and saving coupons.  Oh, I’ve been using them too!  How many coupons have you clipped and thrown out because they were expired?  Me?  Too many.

Aside from grocery shopping, I roasted a chicken in the rotisserie oven.  I love it.  A great meal now and then chicken salad the following days.  I use Hellmann’s low fat mayo, red onion, salt, and it comes out great and low in points!  Jim likes adding grapes to his sandwich.

As the chicken spun around, a saw smoke (steam) coming out of it’s ass.  I giggled like 5 year old.  When Jim came home, he noticed it too.  We laughed, like two 5 year olds.  It was funny, in a sophomoric sorta way.

Aside from the exciting video (feel free to play it several times), I started Weight Watchers back up again!

I worked on the budget for the new house we want to build.   I created a spreadsheet, I’m anal like that, with all the upgrades and changes.  As we find out pricing or think of stuff,we add it to the list and can see a constant cost.

I had gotten a little worried about my new job.  There was such confusion over the schedules available and such.  When I haven’t gotten an official welcome to the company letter or email along with first day instructions, I was a little concerned.  I emailed the recruiter and shortly after received an email from someone else within the company welcoming me.

“Your schedule while you are training will be: 12:30pm-9:00pm Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday 11:30am-8:00pm

Your schedule after training will be: 9:30am-5:30pm Monday-Friday”

Well, that’s reversed.  So I replied, “I love the schedule however is it possible you swapped the training schedule with the regular hours in error?” and then they replied, “The schedule below is correct”.  I certainly didn’t want to argue with this person, especially not knowing who they are.  I then received an email from my recruiter asking if the schedule was OK.  Odd.  I told her about the schedule “change” and she said that it was indeed swapped in error and that she’d let the person know who then in turn emailed me with an apology and then another email to everyone with the revision.  Who knows what happened but I feel better that I got my first day instructions, the list of ID’s to bring, etc., etc.   I wished I had gotten the “wrong” schedule but I knew it was a mistake.

Earlier in the day, I called my NACA home counselor, Alex, and left voicemail for him.  Several days beforehand, Jim emailed him.  We’ve not received a response which is odd.  Is he out sick?  On vacation?  No longer employed there?  Whatever the case you’d think we’d know.  Toward the end of the day, we received an email congratulating us on being NACA qualified.  It came from someone other than our counselor.  In fact, I think it came from a different department.  It goes on to say that we’ll get our qualification letter after attending another workshop.

OK, no big deal but how much are we approved for?  We reply back to the sender, Gloria, asking.  She refers us to our counselor.  Jim mentions he’s not replied and asks if he’s in.  No reply.  Now all this information is current as of the date I’m typing this up (Wednesday).  So no call or email from Alex and no response from the email sender, Gloria.  Alex’s email box states a return call within 24 hours.

Frankly, I’m annoyed.  I know, what else is new?  Do I have a fucking sign on my forehead that requests terrible service?  AND if so, how did they read the sign when I wasn’t there?  Are there cameras somewhere I don’t know.  Sorry for the extreme curse words.  I can probably count the number of times on one hand that I’ve cursed in this blog.

So I guess we’ll be waiting until Thursday night to know if we can build this house or not.