perfidy

This last Saturday, the Buckethead clan once again traveled up to the Shenandoah Valley to examine the property I discussed in my last post. This time, through careful advance planning, we got to see the interior of the house, and got a much better idea of the lay of the land. The short answer is that the lot suits our needs, and we will be making an offer on it directly. The plan, therefore, is about to kick into gear.

There are some issues, though, as might be expected. The house is on the small side, and has very low ceilings. There are power lines running through the field on the other side of the road, which will limit the number of places that we can site the new house that we plan on building. There are some concerns about septic and water. And the length of the commute will, frankly, fucking suck.

None of those problems are insuperable, though. Since we are planning already on making a (very large) addition to the house, the size is not an issue. The height of the ceilings is harder to get around, but if there are other parts of the house that are more vertically spacious, it might just seem charming. The power lines are a potential problem, but since the part of the lot that is on the other side of the road is still pretty big, we feel that we’ll be able to work around that one. The commute, though - I’m just going to have to take the hit on that one. All of that, along with some information from the county zoning officer (a very nice lady) to the effect that getting a three or four bedroom PERC (percolation test, which determines how many bedrooms you can build) should not be difficult and that we can divide up the property the way we wanted (either through a rezoning, or just by means of clever surveying) means that the house and land side of the deal is all in place.

Which means that something else must be screwed up. And, lo, it is. We are running into some financing issues. This is very frustrating, seeing as I was under the understanding that we were already approved. When the loan guy said bad news, my paranoid mind immediately began obsessing about credit ratings the phrase “you’ll never get a loan, you loser” began echoing in my skull. As a distant murmur, I heard him saying something or other about “land contracts” and “house value.” I almost interrupted him with, “Good Christ, man! What does this blather have to do with my insufficient credit?” But then I slowly realized that he was saying that I had been approved, he’d cut us a check – if we were buying a house.

Which it seems we aren’t. We are now told that when you’re buying a lot of land along with your house, it isn’t the same as a normal house contract. It is instead a land contract, and the mortgage company that had already approved us doesn’t handle those. There are two factors which go into deciding which category a property falls into – one, the proportion of the values of house and land, and the total acreage. We’re about fifty-fifty on the value question, which may allow us to proceed – maybe. However, 20 acres is probably over the line into land contract. We may have to start the financing process all over again with a lender that does do land contracts. We can get it expedited, in which case it won’t affect our timetable, but we may no longer have access to all the nifty options you can get with a normal house loan. Which may or may not suck.

At the very least, though, we were assured that getting a loan isn’t a problem, which is a relief. So, we will likely make an offer in the next day or so, and the plan will be off and running.