As almost any home owner will attest, making the dream of ownership a reality is both challenging and stressful. Sifting through loan products, working with banks and understanding grant requirements all present more than a test. When it comes to building or renovating a home to suit your needs, researching options, interviewing brokers and taking advantage of available grant programs may help open the door.
Ryland and Kelly Page of Prospect Hill, North Carolina, recently moved in to the home they planned, designed and built on their own. A disabled veteran who served as an Information Systems Technician in the US Navy before contracting Myelitis, Ryland Page credits detailed research and careful financial planning as keys to success.
“The process took several years from the moment I began researching financing options to when we moved in for good,” Ryland Page explains. “There was nothing simple about it but we were lucky to have worked with great people who offered ideas and helped us find the loans we needed.”
The process began when the Pages identified land for their home. “We started with a lot loan for the land and were able to move ahead because we found more options through farm credit,” he explains. According to Ryland Page, since the land which was once part of a tobacco farm and it had been reclassified for its abundance of trees, it was eligible for special financing that made the land available.
Their next step was to contact the VA Specially Adapted Housing (SAH) agent to discuss eligibility and review construction requirements. His eligibility for the SAH Grant made over $60,000 available for construction. He offers, “Between the SAH grant and the financing set up through the credit union, the lot loan and construction loan became affordable.”
Ryland Page says there are several different ways to proceed with the SAH grant and the VA counsels veterans on the various options in order to best suit their needs. He says they chose a different SAH plan where the homeowner assumes a bit more of the financial risk from the very beginning. “Since we were working with an experienced builder and had saved enough money to get the ball rolling, we basically went under contract first knowing the VA would be holding the funds and planned to have the major inspection done at the end,” he states.
The Pages are currently financing their land and home through a two year balloon while the VA finalizes the release of funds to the builder. He says the monthly payments are more than they will be when the SAH funds are released but asserts the tradeoff allowed them move ahead with construction, condense the timetable and ultimately move into the home more quickly and efficiently. They plan to refinance when construction final inspections are completed to take advantage of currently favorable rates.
Other grants, such as the Disabled Veterans Home Improvement and Structural Alteration (HISA) Grant, are available for qualified veterans. The HISA Grant, which now authorizes up to $6800 for service connected veterans and $2,000 for non-service connected veterans, allows disabled veterans to make accessibility modifications to their homes. The Pages did not use a HISA Grant during the process.
Ryland Page believes that while the process of obtaining funding for an accessible home can sometimes overwhelm and confuse, and there is no single best solution for everyone, the results that research and careful planning might yield are worth the effort.
