Early last week, the 2 mortgage brokers and the lawyer I had left voicemails for called me back.
The interesting information from the lawyer is that even if we were going with a builder, the new home warranty (NHW) is useless. She has clients who bought warrantied homes who then spent 6 years in legal battles trying to get their issues addressed by the builder and warranty provider. The other thing is that the inspections would probably never happen, so we shouldn't worry about that clause in the contract.
The first mortgage broker confirmed that the NHW was definitely required. Her opinion was that even if we convinced someone we were *allowed* to sell the house, and if we could find someone willing to buy it with the huge risk that it had no warranty, that no bank would give THEM a mortgage. She did suggest one of the other companies that provide a NHW to owner-builders. It's one of the companies who had previously not returned my call, Blanket Home Warranty. But she insisted that they have a much better program for owner-builders. So I tried calling them again. I left a voicemail for 3 different people this time, and got a response from 1.
Blanket wants an $860 application fee, which I thought was much better than Progressive's $4k. But then the guy kept talking. If you're approved, they want a $5000 enrollment fee. Their security deposit is $15k, and is held for 5 years instead of Progressive's 2 years. I don't see how the mortgage broker thinks this is a better program for owner-builders.
I had the guy send me the application forms so I could see if it was at least less restrictive than Progressive. Nope. Blanket's form required a lot of personal financial information, which is completely unnecessary for an owner-builder.
Progressive's $14k suddenly looked like a steal.
The other mortgage broker was much more optimistic about the whole NHW thing. He didn't think a bank would care about the NHW. If the government approved our exemption, then that should be good enough for the bank. As for future buyers needing it for their mortgage, he said no bank has ever asked the status of a home warranty before, and he couldn't imagine they'd start now.
We decided to try getting the warranty through Progressive. We figured there would be some new road block, so we might as well get it started so we could find out what it was. At least now we knew that if they were going to be dicks about it, we could go for the exemption. But getting the warranty appeared to be the quickest and least risk.
We submitted our paperwork, sent them a cashier's check, and as of today, we have a new home warranty for our house.
Last week, I got someone on the phone at the province to tell me the name the email about the website access would be coming from. I searched on that, and apparently it came in on June 24. Gmail filed it away somewhere I couldn't find it. MrDinks got his access about 5 days after we applied for it.
So now that we have approval from Progressive, I filled in the web form to register the warranty with the province. Apparently now Progressive has to confirm the registration, and then we can apply for our building permit.
Meanwhile, we got the engineering letter, and Ryan said we were ready to apply as soon as we got the NHW. With the engineering done, and our supposedly final drawings, I started sending them for quotes for our foundation. At this point, I noticed a problem with the drawings of how the main floor joists meet the basement walls.
Most commonly, the floor joists sit on top of the basement wall. But in newer in-fills, where height is restricted and people want high ceilings, the floor joists are mounted inside the basement walls. So the main floor sits lower to the ground. Ryan has been saying since the beginning that we'd be doing it the newer way. But on the engineering drawings, they show the joists sitting on top. I realized that's how Ryan had drawn it, so the engineer based his drawing on that. I phoned Ryan to confirm how this is supposed to be. He replied by email that the joists are supposed to be inside the concrete walls, and that he'd change his drawing. However, that was on Friday, and there are still questions on what this does to our ceiling heights and basement depth. Is the basement wall staying the same height? Or being made a foot taller? If it's the same height, does the basement need to be dug deeper? Do we get an extra foot of ceiling height on the main floor? Is there a mistake on dimensions somewhere? Waiting on Ryan.
Additionally, BIL noticed that our foundation was incomplete. The locations of pilings under the posts are missing. Ryan agreed to add these to his drawings, but needs the engineer to tell him how big they need to be. So I contacted the engineer, who essentially said, "Oh, you wanted us to engineer the foundation, too? We just engineered the walls."
Really? Do people really get one engineer to do the walls and someone else to do the foundation? I don't know all the stuff that needs to be engineered. I didn't know I had to specify it all.
So they've updated that part, and Ryan needs to add it to his drawings. And then, maybe, we can apply for building permits. I'm a little afraid that by typing that, I've unleashed a new monster of a road block that we're going to come crashing into.
The interesting information from the lawyer is that even if we were going with a builder, the new home warranty (NHW) is useless. She has clients who bought warrantied homes who then spent 6 years in legal battles trying to get their issues addressed by the builder and warranty provider. The other thing is that the inspections would probably never happen, so we shouldn't worry about that clause in the contract.
The first mortgage broker confirmed that the NHW was definitely required. Her opinion was that even if we convinced someone we were *allowed* to sell the house, and if we could find someone willing to buy it with the huge risk that it had no warranty, that no bank would give THEM a mortgage. She did suggest one of the other companies that provide a NHW to owner-builders. It's one of the companies who had previously not returned my call, Blanket Home Warranty. But she insisted that they have a much better program for owner-builders. So I tried calling them again. I left a voicemail for 3 different people this time, and got a response from 1.
Blanket wants an $860 application fee, which I thought was much better than Progressive's $4k. But then the guy kept talking. If you're approved, they want a $5000 enrollment fee. Their security deposit is $15k, and is held for 5 years instead of Progressive's 2 years. I don't see how the mortgage broker thinks this is a better program for owner-builders.
I had the guy send me the application forms so I could see if it was at least less restrictive than Progressive. Nope. Blanket's form required a lot of personal financial information, which is completely unnecessary for an owner-builder.
Progressive's $14k suddenly looked like a steal.
The other mortgage broker was much more optimistic about the whole NHW thing. He didn't think a bank would care about the NHW. If the government approved our exemption, then that should be good enough for the bank. As for future buyers needing it for their mortgage, he said no bank has ever asked the status of a home warranty before, and he couldn't imagine they'd start now.
We decided to try getting the warranty through Progressive. We figured there would be some new road block, so we might as well get it started so we could find out what it was. At least now we knew that if they were going to be dicks about it, we could go for the exemption. But getting the warranty appeared to be the quickest and least risk.
We submitted our paperwork, sent them a cashier's check, and as of today, we have a new home warranty for our house.
Last week, I got someone on the phone at the province to tell me the name the email about the website access would be coming from. I searched on that, and apparently it came in on June 24. Gmail filed it away somewhere I couldn't find it. MrDinks got his access about 5 days after we applied for it.
So now that we have approval from Progressive, I filled in the web form to register the warranty with the province. Apparently now Progressive has to confirm the registration, and then we can apply for our building permit.
Meanwhile, we got the engineering letter, and Ryan said we were ready to apply as soon as we got the NHW. With the engineering done, and our supposedly final drawings, I started sending them for quotes for our foundation. At this point, I noticed a problem with the drawings of how the main floor joists meet the basement walls.
Most commonly, the floor joists sit on top of the basement wall. But in newer in-fills, where height is restricted and people want high ceilings, the floor joists are mounted inside the basement walls. So the main floor sits lower to the ground. Ryan has been saying since the beginning that we'd be doing it the newer way. But on the engineering drawings, they show the joists sitting on top. I realized that's how Ryan had drawn it, so the engineer based his drawing on that. I phoned Ryan to confirm how this is supposed to be. He replied by email that the joists are supposed to be inside the concrete walls, and that he'd change his drawing. However, that was on Friday, and there are still questions on what this does to our ceiling heights and basement depth. Is the basement wall staying the same height? Or being made a foot taller? If it's the same height, does the basement need to be dug deeper? Do we get an extra foot of ceiling height on the main floor? Is there a mistake on dimensions somewhere? Waiting on Ryan.
Additionally, BIL noticed that our foundation was incomplete. The locations of pilings under the posts are missing. Ryan agreed to add these to his drawings, but needs the engineer to tell him how big they need to be. So I contacted the engineer, who essentially said, "Oh, you wanted us to engineer the foundation, too? We just engineered the walls."
Really? Do people really get one engineer to do the walls and someone else to do the foundation? I don't know all the stuff that needs to be engineered. I didn't know I had to specify it all.
So they've updated that part, and Ryan needs to add it to his drawings. And then, maybe, we can apply for building permits. I'm a little afraid that by typing that, I've unleashed a new monster of a road block that we're going to come crashing into.
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