Part 10: Husbandry, The Mortgage

On my last post, I had purchased two five acre view lots and drilled an expensive hole in the ground. This next chapter in the misbegotten adventures of a husband and soon to be homeowner leads to the mysteries of banking and high finance.

The Mortgage

“Always borrow money from a pessimist.  He won’t expect it back. – Oscar Wilde

“Hi Gary, Linda and I are building a house.  I need to borrow some money.”

“How much do you need?  $5000 maybe $10,000?”

“It’s a house, Gary, not a tree house.”

“Oh, I thought you were just looking for a personal loan.  I see, you need a mortgage.  What will the house cost to build?”

“Well, so far we’ve spent $10,000 for the land and $8000 for the well.”

“Well?  Are you building this house in the country?”

“Yep, we’ve got ten acres up on Moscow Mountain.”

“No kidding.”

“Yep, the view is amazing.”

“Rich, it’s risky to build out in the country, especially Moscow Mountain.  The wells up there are notoriously bad.”

“Well ours is the top producer on the mountain.  I witched it myself.”

“You what?”

“I witched it myself.”

“Rich, I’m a banker.  We make money by investing in local businesses and properties and charge interest to cover our risk.  The more you talk, the riskier this venture sounds and therefore the more interest I have to charge.  Houses in the country take forever to sell.”

“I’m not selling a house, Gary.  I’m building one.”

“Did you know there are other banks in town?”

“Sure, but yours is the only one owned by my best friend and fraternity brother who wants to give me an incredibly low interest rate so that on my pathetic income I can afford to make the mortgage payment so you won’t have to foreclose and sell my beautiful home.  See, I’m only interested in your welfare.”

Dreamers that we were, Linda and I began researching house plans.  We looked at modular homes, log homes, and finally “kit” homes that sort of fit our financial situation.  We ordered a modest kit home and having no construction experience what-so-ever we decided we would act as general contractor, potentially saving thousands of dollars.

With loan documents in hand and a new set of home-building books from Time-Life Books, we found a kit house that looked perfect.  So, we placed our order and waited for the house to show up.  In the meantime, we bought some rock and built a gravel driveway.  A few months later I received a call from a trucker who said he had a delivery to make and would I meet him at the lot?  “Of course”, I excitedly said.  So, I drove out to the lot and waited for the truck to arrive.  Finally, the truck arrived.  It was a semi-truck loaded with 2 x 4’s, rafters, shingles, plywood, 4’ x 12’ drywall, siding, windows, and doors; everything you need to frame a house. 

I said, “Ok.  I’m glad you made it.  Let’s get this puppy unloaded.”  The driver says, “I just deliver.  I don’t load or unload.  Do you have a forklift?”  I say, “What?  Who has a forklift?  No one I know.”  He says, “Well you might need some help.  Some of these pieces are heavy and there is about 38,000 pounds of stuff here to unload.”  I quickly convert pounds to tons and 19 tons doesn’t sound quite as bad as 38,000 pounds.  Feeling a bit overwhelmed, I walked to my nearest neighbor (this was before cell phones) and called a few friends and asked if they would help me unload some stuff from a truck.  I was careful not to describe the task in too much detail.  Bruce and Loren both responded affirmatively and an hour or so later they arrived, looked at the truck and quickly announced that they were so terribly sorry but they had each forgotten that they had important things they had to do.  I mentioned that there was a cooler of ice cold beer and they reluctantly agreed to help for an hour or so with Bruce declaring there wasn’t enough beer on the planet to even the score.

Eight hours later we had stacked building materials over about a quarter of an acre of land, flipped off the driver who had just woken up from his nap and dug out the beer.  I thanked them both for all their assistance and vowed eternal gratitude and unwisely asked if there was anything I could do to make it up to them.  Loren replied, “no sweat buddy.  Glad to help.”  Bruce responded, “I might need a little help on the ranch tomorrow.  Could you stop by say, about 6am?  It’ll be cooler then.”  Still feeling eternally grateful, I told him that I would be glad to help him for a while.