btw, are you going with a traditional loan? We are going to try one of two places we found online. Haven't decided which one just yet. One is Buildmax and the other is Instant Home Equity. They will finance with little or no money down, which would be bad under normal circumstances, but when you build yourself, your equity is already present after the home is built and appraised.
Just seems like the way to go to us.
It depends how much we get for our current place - we used most of our equity to buy the new land outright. If we break even on the sale (i.e., sell for about $5000 more than we paid 5 years ago), we'll still own the vacant land outright. If we do better than break even (i.e., sell for going market price in surrounding houses) we'll be able to finance a good chunk of the building ourselves. If we have to mortgage the vacant land, that's ok too because the developer finished a road on it after we finalized our contract which increased the value by about $20,000 the day we signed. I figure I'll start lining up financing next summer when I know more about whether my current place will move.