So You Wanna Build a House

My husband and I were living in my parents partially finished basement when we decided to build a house instead of buy one. We had spent a little time looking at what was on the market but nothing was quite what we wanted. The houses with more than an acre of land either needed a lot of work or they were simply too small and vice versa- the big nice houses had such small yard you couldn’t even use a kiddie pool! We knew we wanted a good sized house with enough land that it felt private. We decided that in order to get what we wanted we would have to build it, can’t be that hard- people do it all the time!

I am a planner. I like to have all my little ducks in a row before getting into the pond so I knew the first step would be to figure out financing. In all honesty I didn’t realize this first step would be so incredibly difficult. It took me several weeks to finally find a lender. As it turns out banks find financing land and construction loans to be ‘high risk’ so most banks are not inclined to help you. As most people know, getting a loan can be tricky. Most banks require you to have a credit score of 640+, steady income (obviously!), and all your tax documents. Land and construction loans though banks get very strict. We found that most banks wanted a credit score of 660+, 2 years of taxes and proof of steady income. I had a credit score in the mid 700’s at the time but my husbands was in the low 600’s so for us finding a bank was more difficult. We finally decided to purchase the land under just myself while we built his credit up more.

I called virtually every bank in the state getting turned down over and over again. One bank I spoke with recommended trying to find financing through a small private bank so I started to weed through the banks on my list until I had a short list of private banks. I finally found St Mary’s bank, they were willing to give me a land loan! The conditions of the loan required that we build a “permanent living structure to be used as a primary residence” within 1 year of signing the loan agreement. That was fine by us, it gave us time to find land and build some equity!

The next stop on our journey was to find the perfect patch of dirt!