Sustainable Compromises: A Yurt, a Straw Bale House, and Ecological Living

12. Finances

106 12 Finances Then there came the Great Recession of 2007. On July 19, the day our trusses arrived from Canada, the Dow closed at over fourteen thousand for the first time in history. By early August, about the time I was loading and reloading the straw with the boys, the worldwide credit crunch began. Lenders all over the globe stopped offering home equity loans. The construction of our new house was reaching its peak, and we weren’t getting any nibbles on our old house. On August 6, the day the workers arrived to start building the straw walls, American Home Mortgage Company became the first of many such organizations to file for bankruptcy. Within months, the Dow would tumble to half its size. Then the real estate bubble popped so loudly you could hear it from our Vermont hills all the way to the banks of Iceland. In March, when we first listed it with a realtor, our Victorian house was one of only eleven residential properties for sale in town. By October, when we took it off the market, there were seventyeight houses for sale; and nothing, nothing, nothing was selling. Getting a construction loan for our house hadn’t been simple. Although straw bale houses have been financed using the federal Fannie Mae guidelines, obtaining a construction loan for our house involved a lot of work and luck. Even in the heady times just before 107 Finances the bubble burst, bankers were conservative in their loans. Since a house won’t have any resale value until it is completed, a bank’s money is at a very high risk when it is tied up in the construction loan. Any construction project was a risk; and because ours was out of the ordinary, not many banks were willing to take us on. We soon learned not to begin by telling a bank’s loan officer that we intended to build a straw bale house. When we did, she or he immediately asked us if we knew about the three little pigs. We would have to smile and act as if we hadn’t already heard that joke hundreds of times already. We learned instead to tell them that we planned on using alternative building materials for part of our house. When the subject of straw finally came up, we were well armed with materials. I had documents from the U.S. Department of Energy and other governmental agencies that spoke positively about straw bale construction. I had data on the increasing number of such homes. I explained that several states had building codes just for straw bale houses and that although Vermont was not one of them, we were going to build our house to the standards of those codes. I developed a thorough and detailed budget for our house. I had gotten bids on everything from the foundation to the roof. I had statistics on resale values and straw bale house longevity. And I learned to laugh loudly when the story of the first little pig was told. We received a construction loan, but payments on it were steep. The idea is to build the house as quickly as possible and then turn the construction loan into a mortgage at a much lower rate. Our plan was to sell our old house, use that money to pay down the new straw bale house mortgage, and presto, achieve financial stability in a sustainable, energy-efficient home. Then everyone everywhere stopped buying houses, and we were stuck with both: one fine old Victorian house and one half-finished house of straw. We will now discuss how house construction and its attendant finances place considerable strain on a marriage. 108 The tension manifested itself in many ways. I’d grow angry at Linda’s insistence on knowing every little detail of what had to be done and why. She’d grow frustrated with my silence and lack of communication. I’d go nearly crazy at how she would take it on herself to do what I saw as some little, needless chore while so Fig. 7. The author at work 109 Finances much else needed doing. She had never seen me so bossy or aloof in our thirty years together. One night during the floor fiasco, we were driving back to the old house, when we snapped. We had been talking about some frustration from the day...