Category Archives: Building A House

Pre-build Update

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A quick update. We have spent the past year and a half working with an architect, getting permits, getting copies of drawings made, getting a mortgage, getting more copies of drawings made, hiring a contractor, and yes, getting even more copies of drawings made. This process took about a year longer than we anticipated. Whenever anybody tells you that things take longer here on St. Croix, believe them. It just does. There is never any rush, and if there is, it is only you doing the rushing.

The four month architecture drawings took eight, not including some modifications. The one month mortgage approval with Scotia Bank took six months. The permits actually were ready in a reasonable two months or so, both DPNR and CZM. Choosing a builder took a few months. Working with the chosen builder to make modifications to get our costs down took another three months. Of course much of this overlapped, but we were at a stand-still for a few months waiting on the mortgage. When we were finally ready to close, the builder wasn’t quite ready, and then we had the wettest October in history. We closed on our mortgage in early November. Nothing much happened in November except that we were now paying excessive building insurance premiums on a vacant lot.

Shortly after closing my builder told me I should look into mowing the lot. My first thought was “aren’t you just going to bulldoze everything?” I purchased a weed-eater and went to work. I worked for four hours and got about 5% of the lot trimmed. So that little project was a failure, but hey, I got a nice new piece of equipment which I will use approximately two more times.

At the beginning of December our builder started to clear the lot with real machinery. Finally, some tangible progress.  Why did I buy that weed-eater?

December 2, 2010

December 4, 2010

December 11, 2010

December 17, 2010

Building a House in the Virgin Islands

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I hope to have many posts on this topic in the future, but for now, I just wanted to post about some of the plans that we have for our future home on St. Croix. Now that we have finally closed on the property, the next step is building our home, but like everything else on the islands, it’s not that easy. I read on the Relocation Forum that the permit process just to start building can take 6-7 months. Of course, since we are building on the water, our site will require another permit from the Coastal Zone Management department. Finally, our home is located in a gated community so our building plans must be approved by the Homeowners’ Association.

I’ve also been told that once the permits are issued, you have 12 months to complete the building of your property. That sounds like a lot of time, but you have to remember “island time” can add both days and dollars to any estimate so we are planning on being totally ready to build before we ever start the permit process. Our preliminary plans (or maybe I should say my plans) have included making a list of things that we need (and want) to have in our home. This is the first home that H and I have ever built from the ground up. It is extremely exciting and nerve-wracking.

I’ve broken down the list for the house by rooms. My list includes things like: solar/wind power (separate post to follow); workout room; built-in bookshelves; an outdoor shower; and, gray water irrigation. I have also included very specific items that come from preferences that I/we have developed in living in our current home for 7 years – things like: separate electrical switches for the ceiling fans and lights; cushions for the furniture with slipcovers that I can remove; a spice rack pull-out; a walk-in pantry; and, a dog shower.

We’ve also begun looking at various island homes on the Internet for floor plan ideas. Caribbean homes are often laid out very differently from stateside homes. We toured a home when we were on St. Croix last year. It was priced in the $800,000 range so for that price we were expecting something really nice. Instead we saw something that was really strange. The main room was a kitchen/living area that opened up to a balcony/deck. Then you continued walking on the deck to the adjacent room which was a bedroom with attached bathroom – that’s right: you had to walk outside to get to the bedroom. The realtor explained that this home was West Indian style. I’m not sure what the benefit was to not being able to access the bedrooms by hallways, but all I could think of was having to walk outside at midnight in my pajamas to get a drink of water. First item on our floor plan list: hallways.

Last night, we were watching House Hunters International (we love this show, by the way). If you haven’t seen it, it’s a show on HGTV where they follow homebuyers who are looking for a home in another country. They always show three different options, and at the end of the show, you find out which option the buyers pick. Then they usually follow up a few months later to see how much they are loving their new home. Well, last night the show followed a family buying a home in Turks and Caicos (one of our previous vacation spots). The first option was a $1.25 million dollar home. It was on the water in a beautiful location, but get this, it was a “pod” home. It sounds like something from a science fiction movie. (It actually reminded me of the pods in a county jail nearby – remember, I’m an attorney. I was just visiting, not residing, there.)

Anyway, there were four “pods” all surrounding a central courtyard. The first pod was the kitchen and living area, the second was the master suite, the third was another bedroom, and the fourth was an office. Again, I kept thinking of crossing the courtyard in the middle of the night for a drink. I realize that in the islands, a lot of your time is spent outside. That’s one of the benefits of living in a tropical environment, and H and I plan on having a very large patio and outdoor area, but I think that we can enjoy the outdoors and have hallways!

I know that once we start the real planning process, I may have to give up some of my “wants” because of budgetary or feasibility issues, but a girl’s got to dream.

We Did It – We Now Own a Piece of St. Croix Property!

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We finally closed on the land. We got an email from our attorney the day before we were supposed to close saying that they had not yet received the deed from the seller and the closing would have to be pushed back one week. Then a couple of days later, we got another email asking us to wire our money to our attorney because we would be closing on Friday instead of Tuesday. No explanation why, but we didn’t care. We were just glad to get this first step out of the way.

Now that we have finally closed, the realization is setting in: what are the next couple of years of our lives going to be like? Will we be able to survive building a home over two thousand miles away? Will we be able to survive building a home on “island time”?

These are hard questions to answer. We’re not even sure if we are going to have to sell our home in Texas before we build in St. Croix. We would like to keep it and rent it out, but things seem to have a way of costing more than you have planned when you build in the Virgin Islands (according to some other blogs I have run across.)

Nevertheless, this is a really exciting time for us, and we are one step closer to living our island dream.


We Found a Lot! What Now?

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I’ve been really quiet on this blog for some time because we really thought we were going to have to put our dreams on hold for a while. With the increasing prices of the St. Croix real estate market and our inability to sell our lake home, it just wasn’t looking like a good time to try and buy property in St. Croix.
Well, 2007 started off in a completely new direction. We started thinking about alternate locations to live out our ocean fantasy. As mentioned in a previous post, we talked about Roatan. Then we looked at Belize. Belize seemed to have some advantages over Roatan. Most importantly, it is an English-speaking island. Also, you can live on the ocean without living on an island which can make beachfront living a little more convenient, especially for moving your belongings and that sort of thing. Plus, the prices were so much lower compared to St. Croix. Sounds perfect, right?
We bought a book on living in Belize (after we had booked our annual February trip – pictures to come) and quickly realized that living in a foreign country was not for us. First of all, for me, a lawyer, it appeared that there would be no way for me to practice law without returning to law school. There is no law school in Belize – I would have to go to school somewhere like Jamaica. After practicing law for over 7 years, there is no way I am returning to school! Secondly, being a foreigner presents difficulties for finding employment. You have to have a work permit, and to get a work permit, you have to demonstrate that you have an employable skill that no Belizean possesses. If we could afford to retire at this point, these work issues wouldn’t be a problem, but unfortunately, we are not financially stable enough to retire. (see above reference to law school – I’m still paying for that)

We still took our trip to Belize, and it was wonderful, but we decided with all the obstacles that living there presented, it was not the ocean home we were looking for.

Just before our trip to Belize, a new property came on the market in St. Croix. It was on the North Shore where we wanted to be. Our realtor emailed us the listing on Thursday. The lot was waterfront and relatively in our price range. I told H that I thought it was a sign. He agreed and quickly began making travel arrangements to go view the property – who would make a life-altering purchase without seeing it? Well, apparently that logic was flawed. He was supposed to fly out on Tuesday morning. On Monday, we found out the lot already had a contract on it and had been removed from the MLS. We were absolutely shocked. This property literally sold in one day! Lesson learned: we would not try to view the next property that came up. We would just put an offer down on it. And that’s what we did when the next listing came up.
We took our trip to Belize and were there for two days when we got an email from our realtor – 4 acres on the North Shore! The price was crazy cheap. Instead of thinking, “there must be something wrong with this lot,” we just thought, “crap, we better offer way over the asking price.” So we did, 25% over. Then we attempted to deal with the Third World technology that Belize had to offer. After spending half the day trying to fax the offer back to our realtor, we got an email from her saying that the seller wanted only cash offers or pre-qualifications. No problem – we had been working with a wonderful woman at Scotia Bank on St. Croix and felt like she would help us out. She was happy to help us out, but first, we had to fill out an 8 page mortgage application. So here we were in a tiny town in southern Belize trying to find an Internet cafe where we could print out the application, copy our passports and send them to her. It was about 10 miles into town on an unpaved road – and by unpaved, I mean potholes the size of canyons. We decided one trip per day on that road was plenty so we tried to fax the application from the hotel where we were staying. It literally took three hours! Apparently, their faxes are sent through a satellite server, and it was raining so the connection was very slow. Needless to say, the paperwork was not returned in time, and we did not get the property. It turned out that this was a blessing in disguise. The property had some building challenges, including finding a way to access the property and several drainage “guts.” Getting building approval on this lot would have probably been very difficult and expensive.
We returned from Belize a little dejected – we had missed out on two lots in two weeks. We decided we would not get our hopes up on any other lots. Two weeks later, we broke our promise to ourselves. A lot came on the MLS in the same gated community we had missed out on last summer. We weren’t going to let this opportunity pass us by. It was way out of our price range, but Scotia Bank had changed their mortgage terms, and we figured we could find a way to make it work. This was our dream after all.
We sent in our offer – the seller countered at $10,000 more. What the heck – we were already almost in over our heads so what was another $10,000? We accepted the counter and started the buying process. First, we figured we should get a look at the property. We still had video footage from our trip last summer to the same community, but we weren’t sure exactly where the lot was so H booked a trip to St. Croix.
He just returned this weekend and said the property was wonderful! Even though I have only seen the pictures and video, I have to agree. The property is perfect for us. The streets are really safe for me to run and walk the dogs, it’s located on a beautiful beach, and it’s close enough to town to be convenient, but far enough away that you feel like you’re getting away from the hustle and bustle of the city. (at least as “hustle and bustle” as Christiansted can get!)
Our next steps are waiting on the appraisal which hopefully the property will appraise for more than the purchase price, then the survey, and finally the closing. Luckily all of this can be done off-island, although not cheaply. Every party to a real estate transaction has to hire an attorney so that is approximately $1000 more than a regular transaction. However, with being off-island, an attorney makes things much easier for us.
So that’s what is going on with us – Step One of our plan to move to St. Croix is complete. Now the fun starts – finding an architect, starting the building process, and finally the Big Move!

Financing Our St. Croix Real Estate

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When H and I got home from our second trip to St. Croix, we were so excited. We had found a couple of vacant lots where we could definitely build a home, and the experience on this second trip had totally convinced us that St. Croix was where we wanted to spend the rest of our lives. Then we got a shock that we had not been anticipating. H began calling banks to find financing to purchase one of the lots. Unfortunately, we are not independently wealthy and do not have the means to buy one of these steeply priced lots outright.

H could not find any stateside banks that wrote land loans for the Virgin Islands. He did find some that would write a combination land/construction loan, but we were not planning on moving immediately so we could not afford to begin building right now.

The rates and terms for the Caribbean land loans were quite daunting. Following is a summary of his research. While these rates were obtained two months ago, I doubt the information has substantially changed or become more affordable for the common man.

First Bank VI – 35% down, 8.5%-9.5% ( I believe 7 yr loan)

Banco Popular – loans up to $125K (8.5%, 10% down, 15 years), over 125K 9.5%, 7 years, 35%-50% down

Scotia Bank – 6.99 5 yr arm, 10 years, 25% down ( I believe 1-1.5 points)

Bank of St. Croix – 25% down, 7 years, 9.75% (adjustable rate)

Virgin Islands Community Bank – 50K max land loan (didn’t get any other info after that fact was stated)

Liberty – Homes only, no land and no construction

Schaffer – Homes and construction, no land

Flagstar Bank – no land or construction

Coastal Financial Co – No land and no construction

Allied Home Mortgage – no land and no construction

Family First Mortgage (STT) – no land loans

We were so depressed after he made these calls. The lots we were looking at were in the neighborhood of $350,000, much more than we had spent on our home in Dallas. With these terms and rates, we would be paying close to $100,000 as a down payment and a $3000 per month payment. That kind of money would be difficult for most people, but especially for me with the student loans that I was paying and will continue to pay for the next ten years. Scotia Bank seemed to be the best option for us, but of course “best” was all relative. Our options now included selling vital organs or winning Mega Millions. We just bought a ticket for this week’s drawing.