Home Building Process. January through April.

I am keeping a Word document to track the development of our house building. Here is where we are to date beginning at the first with making an offer (our second) to the previous land owner. As you'll see the actual breaking of ground didn't occur until April 3rd. We are almost a month into it and you'll see at the end that we've hit our first real snag.

January

2 – make new offer to Mr. B. on land

5 – meet at TriSummit to start loan process

11 – meet with Ron to discuss budget

26- research appliances and make list of possible ones to buy

31 – meet with Kent at Builders First Source to give house plans for kitchen, bathrooms & laundry and talk about my style

February

3 – meet with Kent to see her plans; also meet with Travis to ask questions about budget

7 – meet Dan at Lowe’s to discuss flooring

10 – meet Dave at Home Choice Windows & Doors to give house plans for windows and any outside glass doors (not front door) plus discuss options

23 – meet with Becky from MCB for loan

March

6 – finalize deal with personal friends on land loan

7 – have current house appraised to put on market

15 – close on construction loan & buy land real estate attorney's office

19 – meet Ron at house he’s building to see what $125 sq ft includes

27 – pay power board for underground utilities ($10,350)

April

2 – get Builder’s Risk insurance ($1,072 for 12 months); fill out application for water tap from town water dept (pay $200 extra for 1 inch pipe versus ¾ inch pipe = $1,700); apply for Green Belt and record it with Register of Deeds immediately afterward ($12) (I was told that minimum water bill will be $25.50 plus tax for $27.92 a month for up to 1000 gallons; it’s $5.85 for each additional 1000 gallons.)

3 – BREAK GROUND!!

4 – meet Ron to discuss rock, placement of house, etc.

11 – meet Ron, footers poured

13 – begin assembling forms for concrete walls in basement

20 – pour concrete walls, water line run to side of house; meet Shane at Pella windows to pick up quote, also meet with Dave (Windsor windows) to discuss changes on bid

24 – meet with Ron, Rick and plumbers to go over placement of plumbing in basement (bathrooms, utility sink, snack bar sink, hot water heater), utility line ditch filled in

25 – meet Ron and Rick to go over windows, Radon prevention, paying bills to date

26 – decide which window company to go with

30 – concrete floor poured

Up until today everything has gone smoothly. Wade met with someone from the bank today to review what work has been done. We knew the framing started yesterday in the basement. However, we were originally going to separate the width of the basement into two 18 foot sections. They had framed the side of the basement we were going to finish to 16 ft 7 in wide. *sigh* We may be having them tear it all down and have to re-do it. Ugh! I'm supposed to go there this evening to measure the space they framed to see how the extra bedroom, bath and entry going out of the basement will fit now.

So we have hit our first snag. We will get through this! :)

Spring Football.

I finally got to attend one of Andrew's football games. Elizabeth's middle school has been practicing the last two Saturdays for the Jr Broadway Musical, Flat Stanley, at the time his game is going on.

They were up against a team that has won the last two games and beat those last two teams so badly that they quit keeping score. Our team tied their first game (no overtime in Upward football) and won the last game so while they have done well the first two games, it was up in the air on how this game would go.

This is one thing I love about Upward. They begin the games with prayer.

Our team, the Colts, were ahead most of the game. One time the other team was up 18 to 14 but the Colts quickly scored a touchdown. Andrew plays quarterback most of the game but did have to rotate out a couple of times per Upward game rules.

He had to take charge of the huddle this game as part of Upward teaching the boys what the game will be like in the upper grades. (He's playing teams with boys in 4th-6th grade.)

They wear arm bands that have six plays on them. 

They do have some pass variations on a few of the plays marked in red. Wade designed the plays for them; I created them in Word using tables and drawing symbols and lines. Here's an example.

Wade had me print out 1-6 in large numbers and give him four colors of cardstock to hold up. He had me pick two extra colors to hold up to fake out the other team. ;)

In the end we tied. He was pretty bummed about tying and went so far as to say he'd rather they lost than tie. But by the end of the day he was happy with the ending!

I was happy to see my boy play finally. It was a beautiful day - warm and breezy.

Concrete Walls are Poured.

Wade's birthday was the 20th and as he always tries to do, he took the day off. We ate breakfast at Panera and then went to Builders First Source so I could finally show him the cabinets I had picked out for the kitchen, bathrooms, and laundry room. We met with a Pella window rep afterwards to pick up a quote and look at what he had in his showroom. Then we met with a Windsor window seller to change some sizes and things on his bid for the house.

After that was when we went to lunch in downtown to a restaurant called The Main Street Pizza Company. We didn't order pizza though. LOL Wade ordered the fried egg sandwich (fried eggs, mozzarella, mushrooms, green pepper, red onion, spinach, tomato and mayo) and I picked the chicken salad croissant (made with artichokes, parmesan and has a little heat with red pepper flakes). Very good! I hope we can go back soon.

We looked at some houses that Ron our contractor has built to look at windows, roofs, etc. Then after a quick run home we picked up the kids. Andrew had asked if we could go straight to the farm after school so we honored his request.

A concrete truck was cleaning up after pouring the concrete walls!

We saw that our water line had been run up to the house too.

We walked the utility ditch line. Elizabeth had brought a book she couldn't put down and opted to stay at the top of the hill and read.

Andrew HAD to stand in the ditch. Once again he was sporting all camo. I asked if he knew he had worn the exact same clothes the prior Friday but he didn't care. Ha ha.

On our way back up the hill we picked up all the trash the workers had left. When they went home for the day we picked up the rest of the trash around the construction site and filled a 13 gallon kitchen trash bag!

I found my umpteenth four leaf clover! Luck o' the Irish, I tell ya! ;)

Attempting another fire - we still have that one huge brush pile to burn - we had no luck. Despite finding that four leaf clover. It had rained too much earlier in the week and despite the pile being in the woods, it's in an open area and gets pretty wet.

This was as big as it got and surprisingly, it peetered out.

I was happy to find that a few of the little seedlings we had planted almost a month (March 24) prior was sprouting leaves! Yay!

We didn't stay too long at the land but headed to Amigos for dinner. A nice conclusion for Wade and me who had eaten out every meal that day. ;)

For Sale By Owner.

Aka, FSBO. This post is primarily an information post on what we are currently doing to market our home, how we went about it and why we arrived at the decisions we did. In the 3 weeks we have had our house on the market I have had several friends already ask me many questions regarding us choosing to do FSBO and how it has gone so far. Now I'm trying to answer it all for 1) anyone who stumbles upon my blog looking for answers (which will be hard because I'm currently an unlisted blog LOL), 2) any of my friends who think they may do this in the future and 3) myself to remember later on down the road.

When to List?

Before we started building we decided on a date of when we would list our house. Our initial date? May 1. However, we learned that the market was ripe and had was advised that March and April are highly active times for people looking for a new place to live (so they can close and move during the summer, I suppose).

Why FSBO?

Wade and I talked about using a Realtor. We would have probably used the one who sold us this house we have lived in for 9.5 years. Being an occasional penny-pincher, I told Wade I wanted to try FSBO first. With what we would list our house for if we paid a Realtor the customary 6% we would lose around $15K. Ouch. That's the new living room furniture (including tables and lamps) and kitchen table I plan on getting for the new house!

Granted, I felt bad that we weren't using our former Realtor. But not to the tune of $15,000. Plus, I have several Realtor (successful) friends and I felt it would be hard to choose one too. And who am I kidding, money talks.

It's really not that easy though. I was prepared to show my own home. Not everyone is up for that as some may not be comfortable with it. But no matter if you hire a Realtor or not you still have to clean your house and be ready for people calling up to see your house that evening or the next day. To me the good thing about showing it yourself is you can work better with your own schedule.

Setting Up a Separate Blog/Site

I researched listings by Realtors to see how they worded things. The introduction to the property. The description of the rooms. How they played up the good qualities of the home. Then I took those ideas and created a blog to list our house.

My blog is set up as a virtual tour of the home beginning with outside photos of the home and proceeding with entering the home and describing it all. I have over FORTY photos on my blog. I took photos over the course of a couple of weeks when I would get rooms PERFECTLY clean and "styled" for my photos. I also waited until we got a storage unit to free up some clutter (mainly the kids' playroom/den downstairs and the guest room which was housing extra furniture that we are hoping to take to family the next time we go visit them).

I also listed other information that someone new to the area or just anyone interested in more information on our house would want to know. I have my tabs at the top listed like this:

• For Sale By Owner - This is just an introduction to our home with a large photo of the outside of the house including the asking price, address and a phone number to contact us.
• 123 Main Street Details - I actually have our address not 123 Main Street. ;) This is where I begin the virtual tour with photos and blurbs of information playing up on the great things about our home.
• Property By Numbers - I decided there is a lot of information people would like to know that is just that - numbers. The year the house was built, the square footage of each room, average annual and monthly expenses (electricity, water, property tax, propane gas for fireplaces, and security system).
• Schools & Neighborhood - Just like how the big name realty sites list houses, I included the area schools (including the county, city and private schools which have hyperlinks to get to those schools' websites), distance to shopping malls and other area attractions including a couple of corporate companies, distance to healthcare facilities (all our hospitals in the area), and distance to colleges and universities in our area. These places all included hyperlinks (when applicable) and the amount of time (not miles) it took to get there. I used Google maps to get this information.
• Contact Us - Basically, I just gave our address and phone number for anyone interested in setting up an appointment to see our house.

Marketing with ForSaleByOwner.com

After researching we decided to go with For Sale By Owner. They seem to have a bigger presence to represent home owners who are selling their own property than some of the other sites. For instance there is a house that is FSBO just outside of our neighborhood. It has a large banner-style sign in its yard that has long weblink to the property. I could never memorize the address by the time I drove the 1/5 of the mile back to my house to look it up. I had a hard time finding it online by searching with words like "for sale by owner" plus the road it is on. I consider myself a Google expert (knowing the best words and phrasing to use while searching for something online and yes, there is an art to it!!). Finally, after seriously maybe 5 minutes I found it. They were using a lesser known FSBO site that was also not very user friendly.

Would you want someone having that hard of a time finding your listing? Uh, no. So we went with what seemed to have a prominent home on search engines for FSBO sites.

When we signed up for our listing on For Sale By Owner we went with their "Multi-Media Listing" which costed $294. It's a one time fee until sold and includes upgrades to their other two lower packages by giving you a deluxe yard sign (which is very good quality - better than what we could buy at any of our local hardware stores), unlimited photos, and ability to upload a video.

This site is very user friendly - both for the seller and buyer. As the seller you can log on to see how many views you have had plus see how many flyers have been printed. It is possible for people to directly print from their printer without using the "Print Flyer" option on the website so you may have a larger number of people who have printed info on your home.

Another great thing about this site is that once you input all the information about your house, it creates a flyer for you. Easy peasy. We bought an information box at Lowe's and have attached it to our yard sign with these flyers.

One neat thing is the ability to "Share with Facebook". I have done this twice so far. Once when we first got our listing up and going and just recently when we were going to have an open house. I looked at my views before I shared this last time and then looked again 20 minutes later and saw that the number had gone up around 20. Facebook works to help sell. Even if it's friends being nosey to look at your house, you can ask friends to share the link plus it lets everyone know it is for sale in case they know someone looking.

If you have an open house then the site features you with the zipcode area a couple of days prior. If you click on the home to view it then the open house box pops up with the information causing the viewer to HAVE to read the day/time and close the box to keep going. That makes it impossible to miss.

After 3 1/2 weeks of being on the market, we are currently at 449 views and have had 17 flyers printed.

Showing Your Home

In the first two weeks our house was for sale I had three showings. I say that's pretty good!

After the initial decluttering (again, mainly extra furniture that we do plan on getting rid of when we get to travel - we had to wait until Wade's work schedule went back to normal), I made a list of things I may forget to do in my cleaning. These are things that do not say "unclean" to me but I want to do to make the house PERFECT. Some things on this list include "fluff the bathroom rugs", "close the security system pad", "fold bathroom towels", "empty trash", "close toilet lids", etc.

Upon opening the door, greeting and introducing myself I have found it's best to break the ice and say something like, "What I like to do is first show you around the house. Then I'll let you walk around on your own. You can open closets and be nosey to see what kind of storage we have." Then after I take them on the tour ending downstairs, I say, "Feel free to walk around again if you like. I'll be up in the kitchen and can answer any questions you have when you're done."

The first lady I showed the home to was a good experience. LOL I walked her through the whole house and when we finished she said, "You know I really don't want to buy a house with stairs." Seriously? Did she not look at the flyer and/or read the description online? That was okay. It got us motivated the night before to run a load to the storage unit that we had been procrastinating on and it helped me get comfortable with the whole process.

I'm still new at this but I have quickly learned that even though you have all the details spelled out for everyone before coming, they will still ask you. Even though you have an info box chock full of flyers, they may not have picked one up. (Have extra in the house to give.) Even though you love your home and think it's perfect, it will not be perfect to everyone else. "I don't like popcorn ceiling." "We would re-paint." You cannot show your house and be attached at the same time.

Also, you cannot point out things you do not like about your house. When the lady said that about the stairs, I calmly said, "That's okay. I understand it may be hard for some people to have their laundry room downstairs. It's not been a problem for me." I accepted her statement but did not say something to shoot myself in the foot such as, "I know. I hate walking up and down those stairs every day to do laundry. I fell twice the first month we lived here and suffered a slight concussion one time and bruised my ribs the other time." LOL There is some truth and untruth in that statement. See the bottom of the post to find the untruth.

Sometimes people who come to look at your house, love it. And still don't buy it. The last regular showing I had about a week and a half ago was to a nice couple in their early to mid 50s. (They seemed really interested but I haven't heard back from them yet.) As I was taking them into the master bathroom he commented to his wife and me, "She decorates and keeps her house like you do. Everything is very neat, clean and organized." That made me happy, obviously. I also had the husband of the couple who came the day prior say, "Wow. It wouldn't stay this organized for long if we bought it." LOL

Open House

Thanks to a friend who works with a Realtor, I knew that three other houses in our neighborhood were having an open house this past Sunday. Otherwise, we probably would not have had one this soon. The other houses were having theirs from 1-3 so we made ours from 1-4.

What I learned about an open house. Have refreshments. Most people will not eat anything but have them anyways. It gives you an opportunity to be friendly to prospective home buyers. Probably half of the people coming to look are not a "prospective" home buyer. They may be looking for a house but not yours. Maybe 25% of the people will really like your house enough to ask questions and even say something like "We'll be in touch." And then maybe 10% will actually be in touch whether they said that or not.

We had around 12 couples and/or families come. We had three who seemed REALLY interested. So far we have had one contact us. Actually, their Realtor contacted us.

Working with Realtors

Yes, we are "willing to negotiate with buyer's agents" as we have put it. We will allow them 2% (maybe 3%) but we will not go down in price like we would for someone without an agent. Why be willing? Because if word gets out that you are then you may have a quicker sale. (Still not sure I'm ready to sale.)

So the Realtor contacted us Tuesday around noon and wanted to give a second showing that evening. Because we are selling it ourselves, I was able to work around MY schedule and told her we wouldn't be able to do it then. Actually, no one was going to be home so we really couldn't. I scheduled it for the following evening at 6 and told them we had church that night so I couldn't do it any later.

She wanted to fax or email me an agreement to show form. We were afraid she would try to put that she'd get 3% of the sale price and we were prepared for that. My friend who works for a Realtor told me if she did to just mark it out and put 2% (what we were only willing to give since the family found the house, not the Realtor). It turned out that we never had to do this (which I was happy about because I don't like confrontation!); she said this was really their second showing and we would take care of the business if they wanted to make an offer.

They seemed to be very interested in our house. The Realtor was hopeful since this was their second showing and since they have been looking for several months. She called us today and told us that they were leaving on vacation for a week and a half and thought they would make an offer when they returned. We shall see but of course I hope so!


***************************************************************************
Untruth: I really enjoy running up and down the stairs sometimes several times a day. I figure it's part of my "regular" workout. I credit it with helping to keep me in shape. With that said, yes, I did fall twice on the stairs within the first month of living in our house. Once I was carrying Andrew and that was when I bruised my ribs. The other time I was further up the steps and hit my head on the top wood stair causing a mild concussion. I was wearing socks one time and barefoot the other so I couldn't blame one or the other - just my clumsiness. :)

Concrete Wall Forms. Fire Cooking.

Tax season is almost over (yay!) and to celebrate and hopefully take the last few days of stress off Wade (the official Tax Day this year is April 17 because D.C. had a holiday on the 16th!) we went to our land Friday evening. Andrew was pumped because he had a good buddy from school coming home with him for a sleepover. This picture shows what he had planned. Plus, he had all camo attire laid out to wear to school two days prior.

We were excited to find they had delivered the forms for our concrete walls in the basement. The footers had been poured too.

Look at that rock! I'm still amazed by the amount of rock and how easily it came out! So thankful.

Our plans for the evening were to roast hot dogs and make S'mores. This required a fire of course. ;) We are becoming quite the fire builders. The kids helped to get some kindling to help get it going.

Slowing burning down so we can get close enough to cook!

Finally we could start the hotdogs! I had chopped up some pickles, sliced some cheese, brought some chili and chips for them.

Before we left Andrew and Mason HAD to play on the construction equipment!

They didn't go to bed too late that evening. Mason's mom came that morning in time for Andrew to get dressed and ready to leave for his first football game. He is playing again this Spring through Upward. It's a great program but I do dislike that it seems to take our Saturdays away. His games are at 11 which isn't too early or too late though. Wade has been roped into helping coach the offense this year. He's avoided it up until now. I know he is secretly enjoying it!!