毎日の家の革新はひっくり返る

What the heck does an article on home purchase financing have to do with home renovations?  Well, I’ll tell you.

The house which we are currently renovating was purchased by us with a closing date in late June 2007. We were not moving in until mid-August. We are not independently wealthy.  So, we knew that we needed some creative financing in order to own two houses at once, even if for only a very short time.

Having worked in the banking sector for a time, and having moved from one house to the next several times, I was familiar with mortgages, bridge financing, lines of credit and the like. However, it does not hurt to have someone working on your side who is working full time in ‘the business’, which means that they are current on the latest products available and have more experience that you.

Meet Karen D. She is a professional banker with RBC at the Harwood & Westney branch in Ajax, Ontario. We met Karen through our youngest daughter and her activities at our town’s figure staking club.

We approached Karen prior to us committing to purchase the ’new’ house (i.e. the one we are currently living in and renovating). We told her what we wanted to do and why. We also provided Karen with all of the possible financial details, including our goals for what the renovation was to accomplish and the financial position we wanted to achieve once the renovations were completed.

It does help when approaching a professional banker for financing of any type if you have already outlined a plan for how you intend to use the bank’s money. After all, a loan of any time means just that; that is, you are using someone else’s money. So, you need to approach it seriously and professionally, just as you expect them to act towards you. The plan does not have to be anything fancy; in fact, you can ask your professional banker for assistance in creating the plan.

Karen outlined an approach which would allow us to have the additional financing for the period of time when we owned two homes and enabled us to both carry over the low interest rate on the present home’s mortgage to that of the new home as well as a line of credit for available financing of our renovations during the time of double home ownership and beyond.

But, then she didn’t just sit back and wait for us to call her when we had closed on the ‘new’ house.  She checked in every so often to see how we were progressing with the purchase of the ‘new’ house. That was very nice; very reassuring that she was interested in our personal welfare and not just in us being a numeric customer of RBC’s and of her branch.

When we completed the negotiation of the ‘new’ house as well as all of the inspections in the offer sheet, Karen sprung into action and ensured that we had all the paper-work fully completed and signed, gave instructions to those within RBC who would also be involved in our financing activities for the right financial paper-work to be sent to the lawyers involved and when. It was one of the most pain-less experiences I have had with a banker.

However, that is not where Karen’s value was the greatest. The day before the closing, I receive a certain phone call from our lawyer.  Tune in tomorrow to find out about the essence of that phone call and how it could have derailed the purchase of the ‘new’ home without Karen’s direct intervention.