Wayne Homes meeting

The Meeting...

We had our first "official" meeting with a Wayne Homes rep a few days ago. We'd just dropped in the first time a few weeks ago to the center with no appointment and still got to spend an hour with Tory, one of the reps. We spent about an hour this time as well, the first portion of it getting our numerous questions answered, and the second part getting a quote for some additional options we were interested in. We also spent a little time in their Design Center, which shows samples of what you can choose from as far as siding, shingles, flooring, cabinets, faucets, etc. There are choices within the items that are included in the home price as well as upgradable items. Being a guy, everything looks about the same to me. This is where I sit back and let Sharon make most of the decisions - as long as it doesn't look too "girly"....

Since the meeting we thought of several things we'd forgotten and emailed Tory about them; she's been great about getting back to us.

Finding A Lender

I also had my first discussion with a lender today, and it was extremely helpful. Wayne Homes provides a list of lenders with whom their customers have successfully dealt. Having made a couple of unsuccessful attempts already to find someone who actually did construction loans, I was happy for the list. From reading other blogs it seemed like the loan process had the potential for stringing out the overall construction process, so we wanted to get an early start on it (our hopeful dig date target is March 2013). During the discussion I found out a couple of things I wasn't clear about and one thing I had absolutely no clue on...

In the last post we were pondering the issue of getting water from our spring on the family farm. Well, from a lender's perspective that idea is out for us. Since the spring won't be part of our newly subdivided lot the source can't be considered reliable. They figure that someone else in the future might own the spring and there wouldn't be access to water. That brings us back to digging a well most probably since the municipal water line is so far away.

I also mentioned to the builder that we were contemplating getting some of our infrastructure (road, septic, water supply) done early to have it out of the way before home construction starts, and perhaps paying some of those costs out of pocket. He told me in no uncertain terms that I would become like a leper (my words) to a lender by doing so. They apparently want no work done before a loan is in place because of issues with making sure that payment for the work has been done, avoiding liens against the property, etc. They have a representative who actually comes out to look at the site and, among other things, makes sure you haven't done anything. This was my first time finding out about this information and it really surprised me. Luckily, cutting down some trees on my own doesn't count.

The lender took the usual loan app info from me to start the ball rolling. He also mentioned that there's a formula that's used in the biz to see if the value of your land stays below a 30% threshold of the total value of house + property. If you were putting a cheap house on a huge piece of property I guess that would be a bad thing for some reason. I'm not sure I followed the rationale behind this idea.

This process has been an educational one thus far. I imagine my schooling will continue into the future....