We closed on a building loan for our LEED house in Houston today with Northern Trust!!
Well – we finally succeeded in getting financing for our LEED house!
A year ago I wrote here that 2010 was going to be our year for building, but as regular readers know, this was not to be. I don't want to dwell on the difficulties – all well documented here – but let me say that after about a year of failing to connect, we have now found a bank that was interested in green building, provided excellent, personal advice and support and with whom we were able to make a good financial plan: Northern Trust (http://www.northerntrust.com).
I won't go into lots of detail, but Northern Trust not only engaged us in a positive process that ultimately led to success, they also offered us an excellent loan product. I had begun to fear that to move ahead we would have to agree to a non-competitive loan, but far from it. We were able to get a building loan that converts to a mortgage with a single closing, but still at a very competitive rate.
I have to say that what really stood out was the time and effort that the people at Northern Trust took to work with us – we weren't simply fed into the regular loan application pipeline at some of the other institutions we talked to. Nor were we give some of the more hard-to-understand information about loans more than 3 points above the competition and so on.
So 2011 is our year!
Now we enter the calm before it really gets going – by the end of January we hope to be ready to demolish, with a move and some regulatory and permitting work to get through in the next few weeks. When I next post, I hope to have some progress to show you…
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by Oliver Bogler
