Our Neighbors are the best!

I convinced my husband to drive out to the house today.  I was really worried about the foundation and those weak spots I saw in the foundation.  Luckily it was just the way the pictures were taken.

While we were there our next door neighbor (the one with the too close playground- found out later that it was never really that close but I digress) came out to greet us.  I am embarrassed to say that I nor my husband remembers his name.   But he informed and assured me of a couple of things

1. My neighbor on the other side of me works for Toll Brothers (scandalous!) and that's a plus.  Why?  My house sits between two gentlemen who take a vested interest in making sure that RH does not cut corners in the community.  Apparently they have been known to "kindly" point out errors and sloppy work and strongly suggest that it be done correctly.

2.  He volunteered to take pics when I couldn't. He performed this service for another neighbor who recently closed.

He also told me that both of them watched closely when they poured the foundation and that we should be okay.   Yes- both knew we have the Courtland Gate.

The next step is the pouring of the basement slab- which should be completed by Tuesday.  The back fill portion will probably have to wait until next week.   We have a few more days of- you guessed it-rain.  I truly don't remember December being this wet without a case of a heavy bout of the white stuff.

Now for that too close playground- never was.  Now that the foundation is in place I can clearly see how everything is set up and its no where near our sump pump line.  Whew!

Gossip- the other Courtland Gate- the one across the street from me- was put on hold.  I know I was a bit disappointed  about not being unique anymore, but I was a little excited as well to have another family of boys across the street from us.  Apparently our community should  currently be referred to as Boytown.  Most of the families, like us, have boys.  Plenty of potential playmates  :)

Take It From The Top Cont'

So where did we leave off?

We kept our scheduled meeting with the SR to price out our Verona but was having trouble falling in love with the plan. The owner's walk in closet was IN the bathroom. Definitely not a layout that we favored. So we started talking customization- adding the bonus room, putting a door in between that room and the master bedroom and removing the closet all together from the bathroom. That would work right? In the mean time our SR told us about the wonderful fall sales event that would allow us to have huge discounts on all of our upgrades. We even walked a lot that was graded for a walk out basement. I still wasn't sold.

The SR kept urging us to put a hold on our preferred lot before someone else snatched it up. No thank you. My husband has a thing against pressure tactics and the answer will always be a big fat no when you do that. Thanks for the information but we are keeping our meeting with Toll Brothers. In the mean time my husband kept eyeing the Courtland Gate with its 2 story foyer that would help give that open feel that his wife loved so much. Was that an absolute no on the CG? SR responds- if that was a deal breaker, she can ask to get us the CG. Good, do that, but we are going to Toll Brothers.

The weekend arrives and it is now time for our scheduled meeting at the latest Toll Brother site. First things first, I despised the drive to get there. No life, no nearby markets, nothing. But it was Toll Brothers so we were going. We pulled up to the trailer and noticed that clearing of the land hadn't even begun! This could be a problem. The goal was to attempt to get my youngest in the school district by the time he was ready for kindergarten.

We were greeted with a half hearted hello and it got worse from there. Since we had been thru thus so many times before we got right down to business. We asked about incentives. There are no incentives.

Excuse me? You JUST opened up about 2 weeks ago and there are no home buying incentives? You offer that to the first buyers to get people to come in. Well according to your interactive map, you have sold a grand total of 3 with a sketchy 4 home sites. Okay thank you for your time.

We were in total disbelief, I was totally disgusted. He wanted to look at one more home site, which turned out to be another Toll Brothers place we had already seen. Then he wanted to go back to another builder, the one with the power lines in the back yard. No sir, I will not have my children playing any where near those things. Let's just do Ryan Homes. The price is right, the incentives are great and about a 30 minute drive for me to any office, better than the 40 min drive I currently do at least twice a week.

We placed a hold on a lot that day.

Take it from the top

I guess I need to give a little background on how we arrived at the decision to build a home vs purchasing a resale.

Earlier this year while we were in the just looking stage- my husband gave explicit instructions to look for homes that are 20 years old or less.  Not a hard thing to do- except it really made no sense until we were ready to purchase because any home that we really liked would have been sold before we were ready to buy.  

The game plan was to create superior credit by paying down debt in a massive way- this we started in February and had made huge strides  and cleared quite a few credits cards and even payed off a car note.  Well sometime in May- after coming from a swim class for my oldest son, S, I came across a Toll Brothers sign advertising new construction.  My curiosity got the better of me and I drove over to the site and really liked what I saw.  I immediately told me husband who told me no, we couldn't afford it.  I let it go but that must have got him interested in the idea of new construction.  A week later we toured the Toll Brothers model home and was wowed.  So much so, we spent the rest of the day traveling Toll Brother sites looking at model homes.

Thus started our interest in new construction.  My husband began researching other sites and I was pretty much resistant to all of them, I wanted the first one and had even chosen my preferred model, the Columbia.  I made him go to community events, prefilled out paper work that he refused to sign, I cried and and yelled and was just plain in a bad mood for about 2 weeks.  But then I decided, just to follow his game plan and point out what I LIKED about a site first before I shot it down.  But he always got me back- he would get my hopes about a home, then decide we had to look at one more place. 

Honestly- most of these places were pretty decent but had some fatal flaws- one place the lot size was JUST big enough to fit the house- no backyard or rather NO yard at all for the kids.  Another had power lines right in the back yard-no thank you!  One offered nearly 1 acre lots and pretty much promised to customize the home anyway we wanted.   I just wasn't interested in having a septic system for sewage, yuck!  And Toll Brothers?  Lovely homes- they just all pushed the top of our budget AT base price.  And when I visited someone else's home who opted not to do a lot of the upgrades I was sorely disappointed on what was considered standard.   

But I persisted and it was on a visit to yet another Toll Brothers site (there are like 8-10 of them within  a 30- 40 min drive of my home in Philadelphia) that we decided to visit another builder.  We had seen the sign for this community several times but had totally ignored it but now something seemed to call us to it.  It was a Ryan Homes community and we walked in about 30 minutes before closing .  The sales rep (SR) decided to walk us around the home (the first time ANY of the reps except for the one with the septic tank had performed that task for us).  We discussed the features of the model home, the Ravenna and for me, after seeing the grandness of the other homes, the model felt "tight"  She went to her wonder wall (touch screen with the models being offered at the community) and told us about the Verona and its open floor plan.  She briefly mentioned the Courtland Gate but said she believed she will not be able to offer it any more- she hadn't sold any since the site opened up a year ago.

Did I mention that I was stubborn?  I took the information but refused to make a commitment because we had another meeting next week at a brand new Toll Brothers site.