Another sort of search

We had a few decisions to make:

1. Who do we use for a builder?
2. Who do we use for our mortgage?
3. Who do we use for the construction loan?
4. Do we just buy the land and wait to build or start right away?

Jeremy used to work next door to a builder, so we contacted him. We also went with a lending company that worked closely with our Realtor's company. We wanted to check the numbers to see if it would be possible to start right away or if we would have to wait.
 Throughout our marriage, one struggle that we have had is that people don't take us seriously. They don't return calls, they set up meetings only to cancel after we are there, they answer phone calls during meetings - in particular, personal calls, and they generally treat us like a couple of kids who don't deserve their respect. After spending almost a month trying to work with this builder and the lender, we were getting very frustrated. We felt that waiting days for voice mail or email to be returned was driving us crazy. We wanted to make an offer on this land before someone else beat us to it, but we needed to know what direction we would go for financing so we could make a proper offer.

Finally, our frustration peaked and Kati vented on her blog. She got numerous suggestions, but most of them pointed to one builder: a friend of Jeremy's from college who had started his own company recently. We contacted CL Construction and after talking to him, we both felt that this was going to be a much better fit for us.

Telling him about the frustrations we had with our previous builder and financing, he recommended that we contact another friend of ours who is a mortgage officer at Mutual of Omaha. We contacted him and he did in 15 minutes over the phone (with a few documents emailed to him) what the other loan officer hadn't been able to do in two weeks. He told us that their mortgage had a feature that allows you to refinance at any time for only $250. This would help us if the interest rates went down again after we close.

He also recommended a friend of ours from church to do the construction loan at Cattle National Bank. After contacting him, we set up a meeting and in a matter of a week, we were approved and had numbers we could work with. We were preapproved for a land loan, for a construction loan, and for a final mortgage and we would be able to start as soon as we sold our house.

Time for an offer!