If you've read The Owner-Builder Book you've already started. I've found it to be one of the best confidence builders yet. It gave me exactly what I needed to get started. For real. What I mean by that is, starting is not clearing land or putting a hole in the ground. It's planning and understanding what you are up against. This book covers it very well. Jeff in Hampton, VA

Sheila's Forum Posts: 3
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4/12/08

Posted to Alvin-House by Sheila in LaPorte, TX on 4/14/2008 10:01:10 PM

We went out and visited the land on Sunday, I was so happy to see that it looked much better than I remembered. The neighbor has done a great job of keeping it mowed, and it looks like they even hauled away some debris that had been sitting near the back fence. We decided where we were going to put the house and also checked out an existing well to see if we might be able to use the water for construction purposes.

Monday I called the county and got a physical address, 1721 Marilyn Rd. I'm so excited about that, who knew having a physical address would make my day. After getting that taken care of, I called the electric provider and talked to them about a temporary power pole. I guess we have to purchase one and put it in the ground and then they will come out, inspect it and run the wire to it once the inspection is passed.

We'll be going out in two weekends to fence the lot so we'll put the power pole out at that time. Hopefully, we don't have any troubles with the neighbors and the fence lines, the survey stakes are no longer there. If worse comes to worse, we'll pay for another survey and take care of it.

That's all for now!

4/8/08

Posted to Alvin-House by Sheila in LaPorte, TX on 4/6/2008 3:25:52 PM

Okay, I'm going to start this, I figure I'll be going through this entire process, so I might as well document it, maybe it will be fun to go back and look at it when we're all done, lol.

We have land in Alvin, Texas. 2.3 acres that we own free and clear, we've had it for five years and have been talking about building on it "someday." Someday appears to be now, so I've started trying to figure out what to do first, it's been a lot more -- well just more than I expected. We got blueprints, that's something anyway, I'm very excited about them, we're going to be building a 1,680 sq. ft. single story home with an attached carport.

Next up, financing, I'm so unsure about this, after reading this site, I filled out CTP's questionnaire (twice actually), but haven't heard back from them. Also called a local bank and asked for a nudge in the right direction, haven't heard back from their contact either. I'm not really sure what the hold up would be, I imagine my husband and myself to be ideal candidates. Low mortgage, lots of equity, no credit card debt, no vehicle debt, money in savings, etc. I don't know, I guess I'll keep trying other places or checking back in with the few I have contacted so far. My father-in-law has a banker that he has been with for a while, this banker financed his house when he and my mother-in-law built it themselves about 15 years ago.

We have also talked to The Owner-Builder Network, nothing against them, but we weren't too impressed, I think it was the representative's hard sell tactics, I just really don't go for things like that. After all, spending the amount of money we're planning on spending on a house does warrant some time to think it over, right?

Right now we've decided to wait and see if the FIL route pans out, if not, we'll keep trying with CTP and some local banks. We may also go and talk to Owner-Built Custom Homes, I've seen a few people say good things about them on this site.

I've gotten some bids, mainly on well and septic. I have a materials list for the house, but I'm not really sure of how to go about getting bids for it, do I send the whole thing to my choice vendors or just what I think they can bid on? I presume they would only bid on the things they could bid on; but I remember being in sales and getting these enormous quote requests, 95% of it was stuff I wasn't able to bid on and I just hated picking through it to bid on five items. I know these people do it for a living, but I guess I just feel like I'll be making their job more difficult if I don't have the items highlighted for them or something, lol.

That's all for now!