leedhouse.info

Some new hope as we keep working the budget

About three week ago, when it was very hot, I wrote about the frustration we are experiencing, not being able to move forward.

There was an article in the NY Times around then describing how many people were now defaulting, by choice, on home equity loans (not on mortgages), having raised extra capital on their homes to purchase boats and cars. Now that it was time to pay them off, they were simply walking away. They were doing so with little justification, except that since the houses that were to secure the loans were no longer worth as much, it was possible to walk away, and come out ahead. My favorite was the closing comment by one of these dirt bags:

" “I’m kind of banking on there being too many of us for the lenders to pursue,” he said. “There is strength in numbers.” " (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/12/business/12debt.html) Makes you want to bring back debtors prison :-)

Anyway... I mentioned that we had several choices ahead of us, one of which was to work on the budget. While I worried then that getting a lower budget would require sacrificing much of what made the house special and LEED, an unexpected hope has emerged. It turns out that more high volume contractors are willing to enter the custom house building market as larger projects are scarce these days. With some of these contractors involved, we may be able to get the budget to a level where we can secure financing sooner rather than later. Could it be that we can get the budget back down to where we were back 10 months ago? If so, then we are close. Very close.