Oh the Drama!

Are you ready for some serious drama?

This is probably what you are thinking right now..

Seriously, I had the MOST stressful week of my life in February. The story starts way back in September. As you all know we found this awesome/quirky/odd/perfect piece of land for our wedding venue. Well before we made any offers/real concrete plans, we had to get approved for a loan. The easiest process would be to just get a straight land loan, or so I thought. After lots of calls, research, and dead ends. I found that the easiest thing was a land/construction loan all wrapped up together with a pretty little bow. I got some preliminary info from some banks and we decided to pursue Carolina Farm Credit. They had the best down payment option that would not wipe us clean. Sam and I went to meet them, and get a preliminary approval.

It was a little nerve wracking..

They went through all the numbers, we told them we would be self contracting the cottage and they said yes! Wahoo! We were approved. Awesome. So the next step was to get bids for the cottage. We ordered the plans, and started getting bids. We did not have to talk to the bank until we had all that info. Well our timeline got off a little and things were not done until the end of January as opposed to the end of December (I mean, I was only having a baby..no big deal). We submitted everything and waited. I was not really concerned at this point, but I was still anxious to get the formal letter. 

We got a call back after LOTS of hassling - they seriously did not want to return a call! And they told us that the bid was really low and they wanted a contractor to bid it out. Okay..not really in the plans, but fine, if that is what you need, then sure, why not? We had a friend, who happens to be a contractor, bid it out and it was almost 30k more than our bid. Remember we are planning on basically doing everything but the foundation, framing, and drywall. So the big differences were labor cost. This made me nervous. I was not sure if we would be approved for that large of a loan. We were, but we needed to put down almost twice as much and we just didn't have the ability to do that. So we asked about just a land loan. I really didn't think much of this at all seeing how it was half of the land/construction loan we had been previously approved for. That Friday (2 weeks from closing) the loan officer called and said we were good to go, and she will draw up all the paperwork for Monday. Yay! We were out of the woods! Or so I thought...

We didn't hear from them Monday, but Tuesday came and they said we needed a cosigner. What?!? I called and said we could put down half the loan amount - didn't matter. We still needed a cosigner. I was seriously in shock and thinking, "How in the hell did we get here?!?" So Sam and I started thinking, who could co-sign? My parents were not an option, his were and my grandparents were. We approached my grandparents. They said of course! Awesome. I send over the paperwork for them to fill out and breathe a sigh of relief. The next day my grandfather calls and says he is not filling all this out and he will not provide a tax return. Seriously. He just was not comfortable giving all that info. My grandmother was upset because she really wanted to help us out, but there was not way around it. Here we are a week from closing, we have put thousands into this to get it rezoned and I just could NOT stomach the fact that we could lose this land! Back to the drawing board. 

Time to go back down the rollercoaster

After MUCH convincing, Sam's parents agreed to cosign. It was not until the day before we closed that we actually got the approval and even then I was not convinced since this bank had put us through the ringer the past few weeks. We closed the next day and I still could not believe it actually happened! But it did and we are now onto the next phase..selling our houses..

Any good house selling tips??