Permitting and Financing

I have some news. I have been doing some work on our home recently. Before Christmas I talked to a new mortgage man. New Castle mortgage, and over Christmas he was a little slow in getting back to us. So, I finally met with him on Thursday and found out that they had some concerns about the amount UBuildIt quoted us. They want to have some sort of assurance that we can actually build the home for the amount that UBuildIt says we can. Either a signed contract with the price, or they want to see the quotes from all the subcontractors that UBuildIt got. The lender also needs newer quotes, since ours are out of date now. I am meeting with Scott at UBuildIt on my lunchbreak tomorrow to discuss this.

Permitting: When I submitted for permit a while back I got a couple phone calls from Rio Rancho that told me what I needed to do to get the permit. About a week ago I called again, to ask what needed to be done. This time they faxed me the paperwork, and there were a few things on there that they didn't tell me about last time. One of the notes on the paperwork stated that it was clearly a Duplex, with multiple living spaces, and that is not allowed. This made me really worry. I was going to look into it more and make some phone calls before I worried anyone else about it, but I ended up telling Grandma and Scharese. Now I think I've really made more worry than had to be. Here's the good news: I called the permit office on Friday and talked to the lady who makes the decisions on these things, and made the comment on the original paperwork. She told me that the 2 front doors are not a problem. It's the doorways between our side and Grandma's side. So the doorway between our nook and Grandma's den needs to be an open walkway. The door from Grandma's hallway to her den must also remain an open walkway. If we submit our plans with those changes (which are very minor) it will make the entire house have an open flow between both sides and will be acceptable as a single family residence. The lady also made it very clear to me that we can divide the house after we get our certificate of occupancy, and that is not a problem. It just needs to be this way because of the zoning for the permit itself. After we get our certificate of occupancy we will plan on installing doors where we initially planned. That really made me happy. I thought we may have to make major changes, but I made her clarify it multiple times to make sure I got it.

I also got in touch with the septic tank folks and they are still going to be able to install our tank as soon as we are ready.

I sent a bunch of paperwork off to Chris Hunlow, because we found out over Christmas that he actually is licensed in New Mexico to get us a loan. I haven't heard back from him yet. I will try to get in touch with him this week. New Castle mortgage is also working on it for us. I didn't get any final quotes or figures from them because they think UBuildIt may be underestimating things. UBuildIt got actual bids for their quote, so I don't think it should be a problem once New Castle gets copies. I don't know what kind of rate they will get us, or what closing costs they charge. I need to find that out. I will try to do that this week too.

New Castle also (at my request) got a quote from a contractor to build the house for us. I think that a contractor would be better than me at getting things done in a timely manner. It costs significantly more though. So, we are still leaning toward using UBuildIt.

Hopefully the recent progress will keep rolling and we can start building sooner rather than later!