We finally did it! We closed on our loan on September 24.
As I mentioned in my first post, I am aiming to be as candid as possible even though I work for Wayne Homes. In the spirit of candidness, we got to a point in this process where we almost forgot that we were getting a new house. There are a lot of steps leading up to the actual dig date but closing on the loan is one of the biggest milestones. We used Home Savings as our lender and could not have been happier. We were able to only put 11% down and avoid PMI which, if you've ever bought a home, you know is huge! The title company that we used was McKinley Title Agency, Inc. out of Canton, OH. They use a third party company for closings so they actually met us at a Panera right by our house in Warren! The closing itself took all of 30 minutes.
If you're closing on your loan, this means you've made it through the color selection meeting, lot inspection/pre- construction meeting and finding the proper contractors to do your lot prep. That is a lot of steps- but let me tell you, the satisfaction of being so close to digging is something that's hard to put into words.
I'd like to close this post by shouting out those aforementioned "contractors". We hired Ammon and his crew with New Creation Excavating, LLC to do our lot prep. This includes things such as the construction driveway, trenching for utilities, dirt removal, etc. They have been awesome to work with and provided us the best price out of anyone else that we had quote out the work. Lastly, AES Surveying did our boundary and house placement survey and you guys.... I literally cannot say enough great things about this company. They were extremely responsive and were actually able to help us move up our dig date by being available for us on a dime! They were also cost-effective and very communicative. When I dropped the check off to their office for the work they did they all came out to introduce themselves- even Dan, the surveyor himself!
Next stop is dig day!