Since Rob asked...

Last time I mentioned the house, everything seemed like it should start, but nothing had started. That was frustrating to impatient me. Well, it turned out there were a couple of things standing in the way:

1. A bunch of trees.
2. A distinct lack of available dollars to pay for the workers who will do the actual work.

The tree situation got taken care of thanks to a bulldozer, a front end loader and a dump truck. Three weekends ago, when we went out to look at the land, they had just started to clear trees to make room for the house. Our instructions were "put the house here, the driveway here, and otherwise leave all the trees you can"; but seeing what that actually meant in practice was interesting. The absence of big groups of trees somehow made the lot change shape; it seemed to get a little smaller - it was easier to see all the property line flags hanging from the trees now. There was a giant pile of brush and downed trees off to the side, and a couple of clearings were starting to take shape. We went out this weekend and the pile was gone, the clearings have been cleared. And thanks to the rain, everything was ankle-deep with the red clay mud of central NC. Mmmm... goopy.

The issue with the dollars is still in progress, though it sounds like it's just a matter of waiting for paperwork to complete its journey back from the magical Land of Loans. Building a house requires that you pay a bunch of workers to build it, oddly enough. And paying them means you essentially need a secure line of credit that the builder can draw on, to pay for what needs to get done when it needs to get done. You don't write a big check up front; you get a bank to agree to make the full amount of the builder's estimate available and the builder just dribbles it out as needed. And that means, while it's under construction, you only pay interest and principal to the lender on the money the builder has taken out, instead of on the full amount you're approved for - which is a bit of a relief (we'd like to avoid the full brunt of paying two full mortgages for as long as possible!). Once it's all done, the loan magically transforms from a construction loan into a traditional mortgage for the value of whatever the builder took out. We dragged our feet a bit on getting the loan process started though - not knowing anything about the house building process - and I suspect this delayed everything by a week or so.

So, the obstructing trees are cleared. Permits are secured. They'll be starting the foundation, the well, the septic system, etc. as soon as the loan is approved.