A Brief History of the House

I want to centralize one place for various notes, so I can keep the kitchen table -- and my computer desk -- clean.

Notes from conversation with Lori Winder, my loan officer, when she heard back from the assessor (appraiser). "Everything looks good -- there's quite a bit of land with that. [Assessor] came in with $325,000, but that's inclusive. The value of the house itself is about $168K-$170K; the rest is the land. I've sent the abstract out to be updated; that should happen within a week or two. You could open a separate checking account for the construction loan. You can sign for the loan once we have everything set on our end, even if your builder isn't ready to start. The loan could just sit out there; no interest accrues until an advance is made."

My loan is for $128K (and if the stock market continues to tumble, I have to wonder if that will be enough). The house should ideally assess at the same level or higher than the bid amount, from the bank's point of view. So that they're not lending money for something that's not even going to be worth that amount. But we're good -- the house value is sligthly above Eric's bid -- and the property as a whole is about twice that. So the bank is happy to take my signature on a note.

The above was about a 7-10 days ago. At that point she sent out the abstract to be updated; when that came back, she had Doug Wuff (sp), the appraiser, give her a preliminary title opinion. Everything takes a few days to a couple of weeks...

Then Friday, Aug. 22:

Eric, I just spoke with Lori Winder, and also talked to my insurance company this morning.
The bank says that everything is in place to go ahead with my construction loan. I will meet with Lori on Thursday, Aug. 28, to sign the loan and open a construction checking account (that will help me keep things straight). She said to tell you that funds will be available beginning Thursday.
My insurance company (Ellison, in Solon) will have builder's risk coverage in place on that date as well. So from my point of view, things could get started as early as Thursday afternoon! (Of course, you may have holiday plans and other commitments.)
If there are other things that I need to take care of but don't know about, like permits and inspections and things, we can talk about them. I haven't notified Brian Ulch that I am building, but I think I need to clarify first with Rob Brown if and when he will want to prep the land for the septic field. Same thing with geothermal -- does that go out in the field where there is currently corn, and how much land is needed, etc.? Also I'll have a surveyor come out, once I know roughly what's going to be taken out of production.
Well, I'll stop fussing for a minute and just enjoy this little victory. We have an official go-live date! Woo-hoo!

Eric replied that he would get all permits, and would apply on Monday, but it would take a week or two to get approval. However, in the meantime, he could talk to Rob Brown and get started on tearing down the machine shed and clearing the land. Eric asked if I could meet with the two of them some evening early next week. I replied that I could be home by 5:30 any night. Haven't heard back yet.