Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Does a Habitat for Humanity home come furnished in any way, appliances, etc?


We're going to apply for a home at the next meeting, but I wanted to know ahead of time what all comes in the home.
We lost everything to a fire and have been in a small rv for months until just recently getting in a small mobile home, (only 2 bd when we need 4-5), so a home would be great.
We work and pay bills and qualify $ wise and the sweat equity would be no problem, so I'm not concerned with the application process or stuff like that. We even own the burned home, land and all, so there wouldn't be any land payment added to the mortgage.

I just wondered what all actually comes in the house.
* Is it completely finished inside?
* Do they include appliances, heat and cooling units, etc?
* Do they offer pkgs that actually furnish the home, like with beds etc?
* Do they only build certain blueprints or can you decide anything on the home, like if you want the bedrooms clumped together or separated etc?
* What about colors?
* How basic are the designs, such as do they only have bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom, and living room or do they have utility rooms, pantries, and dining rooms too?
* Do they do anything to the yard, like fences etc? (ours burned with the house)
* Can you determine your energy source for the house, like can you decide if you want natural gas or electric for your stove, etc?
* Do they do "green homes"?
* What about under the houses, the pipes and stuff in the ground, (ours are very old clay and would have to be upgraded per city code for us to rebuild or repair), do they add the cost of digging up all the old utility stuff onto the cost of your house? (I know they have to run new lines and foundations on all of them, but what about that old stuff being removed?)
* Do they do basements or attics or garages?

And I guess the most important question is, the sweat equity that you accrue, how is it calculated? * Do they count each hour at a specific rate, like at minimum wage or something, then take it off your mortgage like real $, instead of a wage kinda thing?
(I don't understand that part except that there's a minimum of 300 hours at our local chapter.)

* What about if we have 10 friends that all put in 100 hours each, does that count as 1000 hrs off our mortgage or are they just counted as volunteers and only our hours count?
* How old do you have to be for your hours to count, like if our 9, 11, 15, and 16 yr old help does that count?

* And what about AFTER our house is built and we're in it, can we still do the sweat equity thing to pay toward our home or is that only before the house is built?

Just, if anyone knows things like this, I'd appreciate the information.
I can find questions of the app process and what it's like to volunteer but I really need someone that knows these kinda details too.
Thank you

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