Process Update

Amazing how much time flies in between work, kids and house project. I meant to update on September 10 after our city final staff review, but here it is over a week later...

We had our final staff review on September 10 and it lasted maybe 10 minutes. Engineering had a few minor comments, typos and moving things around a little bit on the plans, but that was it.

We also found out that instead of laying up cash to put in escrow for 125% of the value of the road improvement on Kechter Road, we can, in fact, provide a letter of credit to the city for the improvements. This was a huge development for us.

Originally the city planner told us that we could do this, but somewhere during the process, engineering got confused and told us we could not do it. But she must have since learned that we could and now we will do that. We will have to have our bank approve us for 150% of the estimate that we got from the engineer, which was about $24k. Yea!

Other news:

1. We finalized the house plans with the designer and have now gone to engineering to get the house engineered. We got 2 bids for that. One was over double what the other was, so that was a no brainer.
2. Financing is under way and we'll re-finance the front property as an investment property and the second property as a construction to permanent mortgage.
3. We can submit for a building permit at any time and our builder is working on getting his license in the city of Fort Collins (Windsor, where he is currently building, doesn't require a license).
4. I filed our easement agreement with the county today. That was fun, we actually filed a legal document.
5. Once the civil engineer completes the minor updates from the city, they will print mylars that we'll need to run around and get signatures. And then the city routes them to all appropriate departments.
6. After mylars are signed, the engineer has to stamp 11 copies and then we're ready to file.
7. Once the filing is complete, we will be able to get our building permit issued and get the financing completed.

The process sounds simple, but I'm sure there will be surprises in the next few weeks. We're hoping that we'll actually be digging a hole in the next 4-5 weeks. That means building through the winter. Hopefully we'll have a mild winter -- no 3 foot snow storms!!

I will try to get more regular updates done because things will start to change quickly.