Update on Our Port Jubliee

I know that other than the financial updates I have been posting I have been pretty silent on the actual building of our home. And here is why....

Future Home of Port Jubilee!

Yes, that is our lot and yes it looks exactly the same as it did on May 15th (the day we got our written mortgage approval). No, it should not still look like this. There should be some form of a house there by now. But as you can clearly see there is not! The last 6 weeks have been DIFFICULT (to say the least) and I have not had the heart to update the blog with the status of the house. Because the status of the house was no status at all.

The day we received our written loan approval the city we live in shut down the building permits for our neighborhood. SHUT THEM DOWN! That means that the city stopped releasing permits to build new houses. My house! And so for the past month I have spent almost every single day on the phone begging complete strangers to have mercy on me and release my building permit. I have cried, I have prayed, I have given-up, and then picked up the phone and started all over again.

We came so very close to losing our home! We are using USDA funding and that funding has a deadline of September 30 (they redraw the lines on October 1 and our area will likely not be included anymore). What that deadline means is that our house must be COMPLETE (inspections and appraisals) before the deadline or no loan. July 1st is literally the last day that they can start work on our house and be assured that it will finish before the deadline.

So last week I called my commissioner (since we live in the same neighborhood where we are building he is my current and my future commissioner) and asked him to please help us. He said he would! I prepared to address the city commission on Thursday night. I woke up at 2:00 in the morning and worked on my speech until after 7:00 a.m. It could only be 3 minutes long and I had a lot to say (surprise, surprise).

Thank God I never had to give that speech! My commissioner and the city manager pulled me aside before the meeting started and told me that our permit has been released! THANK YOU JESUS!

They are starting our house Monday and we will have our Pre-Construction meeting on Wednesday! Since we are the only permit that has been released our house should move along fairly quickly.