Saturday, February 16, 2008

Slow Goings

Our first bid for the house, which we received almost 3-4 weeks ago was about $185 / square foot. That was really discouraging. (We probably couldn't even do half the house at that cost). We met with one other builder that I really liked. He gave us a pretty good estimate and wanted some more details on the plans. He had a lot of good information for us. We let him do most of the talking, and he sounded like a good fit for us. He would be able to fit in our project this spring/summer and could estimate an approximate timeline of 7-9 months for a completed house. We would like to get another bid or two, but I'm leaning towards him. His best guess - again, needed more details on the plans would be $110 - 140 / square foot. He thought it could be done for around the $110/square foot, but that the basement/garage was going to be a bit of an unknown. Zach had been working on getting everything together with the plans but has been swamped at work. It is a little hectic with everything going on, but we are still trying to keep going strong.
I need to meet with our loan officer again and see what is available for a 9-12 month construction loan. Previously she said 6 months is the norm, it costs more if you go over that; however if you don't set it up right than you can be penalized for the time spent over the 6 month period...
Our property is in the floodplain (FEMA maps call us in the floodplain and unless you survey the land / area and say you aren't in the floodplain then you have to pay flood insurance for your home- this can be $150-1,000 per month around here). So, we hired a surveyor (specializing in floodplain property) to come out and specify a chunk of the property out of the floodplain. We couldn't use the original survey completed a few months ago because some of the land we definately know is in the floodplain; however, our building site should be out of the floodplain. This then has to go through FEMA and then you can be "out of the floodplain" and not pay floodplain insurance. We also needed to know at what elevation our basement could be - since we need and want it at least a foot above the base flood elevation. The survey crew were out last week, our estimate for the entire thing was $1000.00. Well worth the effort to not pay insurance. Hopefully the results will come soon, and another item scratched off the list.

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