Archive for July, 2008
July 31st, 2008 -- Posted in family, future / dreams / goals, hill to haven, pics |
Yep, it’s official, Paul and I are finally building our “dream home”.
We signed the papers yesterday evening and also picked out our outside colours! We are going with a brown roof, a beige brick, and a beige garage door (more peachy/white tones than yellowy or grey), with cream siding and white trim on the windows. 
Here’s a general idea of the colours:
Sooo nice to be moving on from the stressful, organizy, paperwork-y, finance-y stuff to get to do the fun stuff like picking out colours! We have our first Design Centre meeting in a couple weeks, when we will meet our designer and go over the choice for the first “stage” of completion (Structural) as well as the second stage (Framing). The decisions need to be made in August so we are on a tight schedule there!
Paul and I went out for drinks and dessert last night to celebrate but also had our papers spread out across the table to get a head start on choices – it’s a little overwhelming!! but also very neat to be able to have those decisions up to us!
Looking forward to this new experience and interesting journey!!!
July 29th, 2008 -- Posted in family, future / dreams / goals, hill to haven, pics |
So our mortgage was approved just fine, yay! No worries there. She e-mailed the approval straight to Minto as well so we don’t have to wait for a paper or anything.
Meanwhile, Minto called today, and when they said they had not-so-good news, I thought maybe our lot had been challenged, but no, it was a price increase! All the homes have gone up by $5,000, just like that. At first I thought this included ours since we had yet to sign the agreement, but when I called back later to change our appointment to come in and sign, I found out we get to keep our price. Phew! The “bad news” part was just that they could only hold the price until the end of the month, so we would have to sign the agreement on Thursday at the latest. We have an appointment that afternoon so if all goes well, we should have everything finalized Thursday! *fingers crossed*
To celebrate, here’s a couple pics of Avery at our house “site” from the weekend:
Avery on site and the homes going up around our area
Checking out a “tiny” Crocodile Lake
More pics in our Gallery’s July 2008 folder, as well as pics of Paul’s uncle’s 50th Birthday on Sunday and of the kids’ new 2nd cousin Myleigh.
July 23rd, 2008 -- Posted in future / dreams / goals, hill to haven |
Ok, is this not the worst “catch-22″ ever…?
1. You are not allowed to withdraw RRSP funds under the Home Buyers Plan unless you’ve already entered into a written agreement to purchase a home.
2. You are not allowed to enter into an agreement to buy a home (with this builder anyways!) without giving part of the down-payment the same day, with funds already in your bank account.
Since it takes 3-6 business days (apparently) to withdraw the funds from your RRSP, this means someone can’t use her/his RRSP funds for the first down-payment on a house if one is required upon signing the agreement.
So either this a big flaw in the great-sounding Home Buyer’s Plan or Minto is really on crack for wanting 5% of the cost of the house the very day you sign on the dotted line.
Speaking of Minto being on crack, do you know they want 12.5% total down-payment, and want it within the first couple months of signing?
Which may have been more do-able had we been able to use our RRSPs for that first 5% because that’s where the bulk of our funds are!
Oh and also, I made a mistake in calculating the total amount in our RRSPs, so that was a disappointment. I think it was because we’d been paying off the RRSP loan every month, so two payments were coming out for about the same amount even though the 2nd payment wasn’t actually going towards new contributions.
Another big snag: our RRSP share values suck beyond all sucking right now. If we withdraw them now, we not only haven’t gained a penny of interest on them, we actually *lose* over $1000 from what we’ve contributed over the past 5 years!!!
Our “dream house” is looking a little too dreamy right now. We might have to give this one up and go with another neighbourhood or a later closing date or different street or combination of those factors. 
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