A crazy idea
Posted on | October 28, 2008 | 8 Comments
So I had a positively crazy idea the other day.
Given the housing market crisis that is likely impending, i was thinking about selling our house now, rather than waiting until we start into the construction of the new house. The theory is that if the market does tank (even a percentage of the tankage of the US market would be detrimental to our plans), then we will have pocketed a larger portion of the profit on our house.
All along, we’ve been expecting to net at least $70,000 (hopefully closer to $100,000) on our house, given what similar houses on our street have sold for, the quality of our landscaping and the remainder of what we owe on our mortgage. This, in addition to whatever we’ve paid into the purchase of the lot would serve as the down-payment on the new house. Our total budget for the new house is around $300,000. If we can manage to put down a third of that, our new mortgage payment should be close to what we’re paying now, plus we won’t have any heating costs to speak of due to the passive solar nature of the design. Win-win, right?
Back to the crazy idea. So we sell the house now, pocket a tidy profit and either invest it in a low risk GIC at 3-5% or pay down the land and other debt. Then, we move into an apartment in the city. Given the size of our family, we’d need a fairly large apartment. Three bedroom apartments in the Clayton Park area seem to be going for about $1,100/month and include heat and power. This would save us about $600/month over our current mortgage and oil bill. We would then pour this into paying down our land.
So, the pros of this idea would mainly be monetary, which is not necessarily always inline with lifestyle or family. However, my wife isn’t entirely opposed to the plan either. Being closer to the city would allow me to use my car less and ride my bike, run or walk to the office, saving on gas.
The cons are a bit numerous though:
- finding a big enough apartment that would allow us to save some money every month.
- finding a dog-friendly apartment. Giving Putney away is not an option, and he’s not a small dog.
- We’ll likely need to store a bit of stuff, so that adds an additional monthly expense (anyone know how much these cost?)
- Sam will need to drive back out to Hammonds Plains to work and drop off the kids at school/daycare. Her vehicle is bigger and less fuel efficient than mine, but at least shed’ be going against traffic. This also means that I would rarely be able to pick up or drop off the kids, which could be problematic.
On second thoughts and troubled times
Posted on | October 14, 2008 | 1 Comment
We’ve been doing a great deal of thinking lately about our house project. It all started when we had family over for my son’s first birthday party a few weeks ago. We were showing the plans to my brother in law and talking about the functional aspects of the house. Dan pointed out that if we wanted the house to be as true to the values we professed to espouse, having a huge third floor glass-bedroom really goes against the grain.
Sad to say, but he’s right. Forcing our girls to share a room so that my wife and I could keep that beautiful top floor to ourselves seems downright wrong. Which started us down an interesting path. Once we began to discuss this, we also began to talk about whether or not we could even afford to build the three story house at all. Monica has told us a few times that building the house for much less than $200/square foot is going to be difficult. At that price, we’d be looking at close to half a million dollars for this house including the land. Make no mistake, there is no way we can afford a house in that price range. With the world markets and the expected downturn in the economy, as a small business owner I’m not willing to take the risk of shouldering such a mortgage, even if the bank told me I could afford it (I don’t think they would, but anyway).
So, we started talking alternatives that would allow us to have a modern, energy efficient home at a more reasonable cost. It seemed that we had lost sight of our original objectives and started going down the “dream house” path, somewhere we never meant to be.
Second Floor plan from the last design
We had a long conference call with Monica on Friday night and talked about filling in the open space loft area above the main floor great room. This would be become a large room for the girls to share and take our house design down to a more standard two story house at about 1,800 square feet. We might add a little area for entry into the house and turn the first floor mudroom into an away/play room. This would pretty much give us a perfect house for our needs, with the sole exception of storage, but there are creative ways to handle that as well. Plus, I think we’d build a shed right away to store my plethora of bikes and all that stuff. We’re aiming to build this house for somewhere a little north of $150/sq ft which puts us right at $300k.
So now, we’re waiting for a redesign from Monica that takes this stuff into account. I was starting to feel a little overwhelmed by the sheer scale of it, and now that we’ve pulled back, I think we’re in much better shape to proceed with discussions with builders.
Look for a few posts coming up shortly on our home show experience and a visit we made to a passive solar farm house construction site outside of Windsor, NS.
Vermont Eco-Builder house blog
Posted on | September 28, 2008 | No Comments
I discovered another eco-builder blog today, this time based in Vermont. They’re already living in the house, after starting the process about 18 months ago.
One of the things I’ve found that’s really interesting about their project is the use of recycled and cast-off materials from builders and showrooms. They’ve also tried to be super conscious of the source of the materials to ensure that the build is as environmentally sound as possible.
We haven’t really explored the possibility of using more sustainable concrete sources, but once we have a chance to meet with builders, we will be doing just that. It honestly all depends on the total cost of the project for us as well.
Their project has been profiled in the Boston Globe today.
On Priorities
Posted on | September 24, 2008 | No Comments
We’ve been asked by our designer to rank the importance of a number of factors and how much they play into our decision making process. We decided that rather than rank them from most to least importance that we would instead group them into one of three categories. Must Have, Want to Have and Nice to Have. We also added some of our own in italics at the end of the lists.
MUST HAVE
passive solar
no leaks or mould
energy efficient
budget $300
lots of storage
open planning (on main level only)
2 baths
3 Bedrooms
good sized kitchen/pantry
WANT TO HAVE
view of lake
modern
away room
play room
organized cohesive (need clarification)
2 - 3 storey
2.5 bath
deck off main living
NICE TO HAVE (but not essential/can add later)
grade access
4 bedrooms
deck off master
schedule
decks off bedrooms
office loft space
durable finishes
screened porch
window seats
While all of these things would be great to include in our home, we realize that we may need to make some concessions here or there. I think the most interesting item of all in here is the schedule point. I’m wondering how much we can affect our budget simply by stretching the build time out over a longer period. However, I’m also wondering how much our bank would like that. Where we will be having a draw-type mortgage to help pay costs along the way, I highly doubt that they would let us take 2 years to build the house.
Does anyone have experience with that? How does the length of the build affect cost and will your bank crucify you for taking too long? I’m reminded of a phrase on a poster at one my printers offices: You can have it Good, Fast or Cheap. Pick any two. Personally, I’m inclined towards Good and Cheap. We’ll see how possible this is.
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