Ok, loan approved. Yes, they asked for a couple of things to be paid off, but we were going to do that anyway, so not a problem. So now we have a real idea of how much money we have to 'play' with and can start asking hard money questions of the builders. Yay! I think.

Yes, particularly scary as it is a lot of debt, though really no more so, as a percentage, than the loan I took out to buy the current house mumblety thump years ago.