Our Forever Dream Home

About a year and a half ago, we decided we were ready to build our home.....our forever dream home.  I call it this because we will be building on family land, smack in the middle of our 400 acre farm, and so when we build, it will be forever.  Obviously, I need it to be my dream home since I will be here forever.  So a year and a half ago, we agonizingly had plans drawn by a local architect.  I say angonizingly because have I checked and double checked and thought through every square inch of this house.  Next, we spent two weeks getting quotes from contractors.  Finally, we were ready for the bank. 

Now I don't work in the financial world and I don't quite understand all that goes into getting a home construction loan, so bare with me.  Apparently, when a home is appraised, it is compared to similar homes in the area to get an appraisal value.  So the appraiser must look at homes that have recently sold that are comparable to what we want to build (number of beds/baths/etc.) that also must be within a certain distance from where we are building.  Since we live out in the country, this became a problem.  First, there were very few homes that could be used.  Second, the homes that could be used were all way smaller than what we are wanting to build.  This lowered our appraisal value dramatically, and since the bank only loans a percentage of the appraisal value, we were out of luck.  We would have needed about $80,000 out of pocket, and I don't know about you, but we just don't have that kind of money lying around. 

Fast forward to today and we are once again attempting to build.  We think we may have found a sneaky way to work around the low appraisal.  I would go into more detail, but my future loan officer may be reading this =).  Building is a slow process and we will need to get new estimates from all the contractors, but I'm really crossing my fingers that this works.  Will post more as soon as I know more.