I don't think Mandie could have done a better job giving some background as to the beginning of this journey, though I could fill in some gaps. As she said, we weren't sure whether we would be building or buying, but after determining that no matter the choice, we would still have the same down-payments needed, it made sense to us to get exactly what we wanted out of a house, so building was the choice. We had looked with Wayne Homes and Schumacher, and for us Wayne was the choice. We had no problems with Schumacher, we just felt Wayne suited us better. Working with Jeannette, Alana, and all of the Belmont location staff has been a blessing. Kudos to them on being customer driven. They are beyond kind and helpful, and will answer any question and will be up front with you, which is exactly what we needed. It helped having their input, because in the end, it has led us to where we are today.
As Mandie noted, we are now building with the Hampton model. We had planned on going with the Jamestown, but with the recent price increases also came more perks, and many of those were things we wanted, and it left us around $9,000 more in our budget to put to our advantage. We essentially are using the Craftsman look on the front, minus a few small things here and there, but we have the shake, stone, and 2 color choices (Harbor Blue and some form of gray...can't remember the exact name) for our siding choices, and a beautiful stone with gray and blue tones to it to match. It's going to be wonderful! Inside, we added 2 feet on the left side of the house, which made the family & great rooms larger, as well as the 2 bedrooms upstairs. We ended up deciding to switch the layout of the pantry and powder rooms on the 1st floor, moving the pantry into the laundry space, moving the laundry upstairs (more on that in a minute), and making the original pantry space a mud-room/entry from the garage, and flipping the bi-fold closet that used to be in the laundry INTO the mud-room area for a coat closet. In the kitchen, we added a 4-foot island. We also decided to put a wall in between living room and great room, leaving a 6 foot gap by the stairs. This way we could give the rooms some separation (after all, I plan on having "some" man-cave space in this house...the basement is my long-term goal) while keeping it open and not closed off. We may add another window to that room to give it more light. We'll see about that on our lot-inspection/pre-construction final meeting. UPSTAIRS, this is where we made big changes. In adding the 2 feet on the house, the bedrooms are now even larger which is great. We visited a Hampton in Ohio where they converted the Loft into a 4th bedroom, however it really cramped the place up. So what we did was take the bathroom and put the length of it against the outer wall, which made our landing space larger. We also took Bedroom 3 and converted it to the loft, using the extra 2 feet of house to our advantage, shifting bedroom 2's closet left and making the now-former Bedroom 2 closet a laundry space with 2 more feet in it. It gave us more shelving and hanging options to air-dry clothes without hanging them over doors and things like that which we currently do. In the now former loft we added a closet on the outer wall running up the side, but leaving some feet in that corner I believe, either having space for a desk, or a twin bed, not sure, but the closet is still much larger than a standard closet. We then took the linen closet and loft closet, and took those spaces and made our large master walk in even larger. We also switched our bathroom layout around some, giving us a large sink space, basically a double vanity sink but with only 1 sink. We never seem to compete with using a sink, but we need more counter space, so that works. I'll be sure and share a blueprint plan if I'm allowed later once we get clean copies. The layout works wonderfully for us. The best part of all this is that we made all of these customizations, got even more than we had planned on with the Jamestown, and STILL managed to save $1,000, while keeping the same amount of square footage the Jamestown has.
So the biggest thing we had wondered as we started this was, "what is the process like"? I'm sure everyone wonders that, as buying a house seems much simpler. The nice thing here is that you are involved in everything from day 1. You're involved in picking/customizing your plans, picking colors, cabinets, carpets, EVERYTHING. In the end, you are making this house the way YOU want it, they are just great facilitators of helping you visualize and get what you want into reality.
Early on, the goal was 1) pick out a plan that works for us, and 2) find land. We found what we wanted, but as Mandie said, there were concerns about a possible high water table due to the property being near a creek. Our seller was nice enough to spend the money getting soil testing completed. The soil near the creek was definitely wetter, but in the end our field manager Tim said it was buildable. He has been nice enough to look out for us, not just saying "sure buy that land, no worries!" without at least trying to keep us from being caught by possible surprises later. Everyone like I said, has been VERY helpful. In the end, we put more in our cushion to account for this soil, as we may need extra gravel for back-filling, and some other site work. Our total cushion was around $30,000. Once we settled on the land, we have been working with Home Savings, who is our lender. While the whole mortgage process has been work, they've been open, courteous, and very helpful. We've had to do some extra work here and there, collecting documents and what not regarding credit, bank accounts, etc., we had no issues with our pre-approval. It's all about getting everything ready for closing at this point. What's interesting about this loan is that you get your general loan cost, but your final costs aren't until after the home is built. We have our goal of keeping things at around $250,000 total (Loan + Land + Cushion costs), but I'm sure that will fluctuate. Right now we are on pace, but know things will go up. We can afford for that, but we don't want to be house broke either, so we may have to make some sacrifices along the way depending on how things go.
We need 5% for the down-payment, so roughly $12,500 for the initial planning of the loan being $250,000. If it ends up being more, then we pay the rest later after everything is completed. These construction to permanent loans are quite confusing, as it's not straightforward like a typical mortgage can be. We're still saving up for our final down payment, but what's been HUGE is that instead of using a personal value list as our incentive with Wayne (they'll pay for some of the things you want, like better cabinets, carpet, whatever), they are actually covering our closing costs, which is HUGE for us. They have been VERY helpful as you can tell.
Our first big meeting with Wayne was our colors appointment. Given how little Lanie is coming around the time of closing, they were nice enough to let us do that meeting first, to help with Mandie so she could be there. We went up and spent the whole day with them (about 6-7 hours) picking out details. This was also when we made a lot of our changes to our floorplan. We went through and picked anything and everything: Siding, carpet, floor (we went with the Nafco flooring. Looks like wood, but its more durable and safer for us), wall colors, cabinet pulls, cabinet colors/material, lighting options, everything. It was a lot of fun to start to visualize how our home will look.
Next up is our Lot Inspection/Pre-Construction Meeting. We meet with our field manager for around 2-3 hours at the lot, laying out where the house will sit, they will shoot the grade to determine more accurate costs and figure out the best placement of the house, and then we go up and do our final pre-construction meeting where we finalize the home plan. From there, it's to closing and getting other things in place. We need to get a permit to put in a larger culvert for driveway/construction access, but other than that we just have to get the construction permit. All of our utilities are already set up on the property, which will save us more costs, just having to pay for the hook up fees and installation. We also have to get the lot surveyed, and get the temporary poles put into place (after survey is complete). In the end, it's looking like move-in time will be around October or November at the latest. Hopefully earlier, but we understand things are very fluid and will be for a while.
If there was anything I'd say (from experience) to prepare for, it's to get your land at the time you are building if you can. If you already have land, you're way ahead of the game and will probably be able to put more $$ into your home versus all of the other costs. However, if you buy the land before doing the construction loan, you'll have 2 separate closings, therefore 2 separate closing costs, aka more out of pocket money to shell out. Also, be prepared for lots of paperwork, emails, documents to send in, and so forth. Do NOT be afraid to ask questions, they are more than helpful, and you'll have lots of questions as you go through it all. Can we move this wall? Can we add this wall? What will it cost to do this? or that? So many options, so many things that change along the way. Also, be willing to be open minded. You will likely change your ideas and plans over time. You'll be surprised how things can change, and how things may force change. The price increase ws something we planned on avoiding, but int he end, it did us a favor and opened the door to new opportunities.
Next big day will be next Friday the 17th, our LIPC day. More to come soon! We hope you enjoy our journey, and hope it helps you in your own home-building plans.