Let's do this

So, the more that we look at the Sewickley floor plan, the more we like it. Unfortunately, there is no model home on display, so we can only go by the floor plan and our imagination. The Sewickley is a slightly smaller version of the Fox Chapel model, so it's not too difficult to imagine, but with one key difference. Having an attached side garage instead of an integral garage gives you a massive basement the size of the whole house. Then, you can also get the alternate master suite option, which puts the master over the garage, enlarges the other three bedrooms, and gives a two-story entry. This makes up for the smaller initial square footage and gives us exactly what we are looking for.
We discussed it and did a lot of research over Thanksgiving, so that we were ready to discuss this with our SR, Michael, today. Michael gave us all of our options and was pretty candid about some negatives that we faced, but did convince us to go for it. He came into the office on his day off, while he was working on a personal project for this. I understand that as a salesman, this is not unusual, but I still appreciated his dedication.
We went over everything with Michael, including costs, flooring, writing, and floor plan options at a high level. It all worked well, until we went to the available lots. There are only five lots available wide enough for an attached garage and graded for a level entry and a walk out basement. We checked out the lots and were not thrilled. They are all highway-side and have a noticeable amount of sound pollution. There is a ravine between the phase four and phase five lots where there are no trees to block the noise and the available lots are right next to that area. Since these were the only lots able to the wide footprint of a Sewickley with an attached garage, we didn't have much of choice, so we decided to go for it!

Enter the Sewickley

Our sales rep, Michael calls and tells me that he has good news. At this point, my wife and I have moved on and are back looking at existing homes. I ask if there are wider lots, now. No. He explains that they have a sales meeting every Monday and today they announced that they added a new option to the Sewickley model, an attached garage, which would allow for a level entry like we wanted. The only models that we considered were the Fox Chapel and Oakmont, which is slightly larger than the Fox Chapel. The reason is the dining room. My wife had fallen in love with the 13' x 13'+ dining room and couldn't imagine settling for anything smaller. The Oakmont and Fox Chapel are currently the only models with either builder that have a large dining room.
You see, my wife is a great and considerate hostess. As we have been looking for a new home, we have realized that it will be the largest home of anyone in our immediate family. As such, we will likely be hosting most large events, like Christmas and Thanksgiving dinner. There is no way that we will be able to fit a large dining room table and buffet in a smaller dining room.
So, we look at the Sewickley floor plan and, sure enough, it has a smaller dining room. Then it hits me. Do we really need a larger dining room? When we have a big event, like Thanksgiving, there is no way half of our guests will fit into even a 13'x13' dining room. That's where having the large morning room will be so useful. I talked it over with my wife and she agreed. So... we are back in the Cobblestone game!

Our Real Estate Toolbox

My wife and I have been searching for the perfect new home for three years. In that time, we have gained a lot of good experience in Pittsburgh house hunting and these are the best tools that we have found.

An aggregator is a tool that automatically pulls information from one or more sources. There are many real estate aggregators available, but Zillow (http://www.zillow.com/) is our preferred one because it has great functionality and it has been available in the Pittsburgh region for a long time. It has more feedback and listings than the next best option, Trulia (http://www.trulia.com/), although that is a good option, too. Although Zillow aggregates from tons of sources, including private sales, new construction, and pre-foreclosure, in one convenient location, it does generally take several days for Zillow to get the updated listings. In very hot markets, this may be a deal breaker, but is not usually an issue in the Pittsburgh area.

As for realtor web sites, Howard Hanna (http://www.howardhanna.com) is the favorite for both of us, as well. The website is very functional and allows you to easily filter by school district, which is our top priority. Recently, they changed their results so that all of the results display together, whereas they used to display all of the HH listings, first. The mobile website leaves something to be desired, but they all do.

The Allegheny County Assessment website (www2.county.allegheny.pa.us/RealEstate/Default.aspx) is a great resource, once you have narrowed your search to a specific street or house. You can find historic tax and sale information, exact lot dimensions, as well as the comps used to determine tax value. You can also quickly scroll through all of the houses on a specific street. A few years ago, they removed the ability to search by name, but once you find the house or street, owner and tax-payer information is all available because it is a matter of public record. It is kind of creepy, but can be very useful when you are trying to contact an owner, directly.

The single most valuable tool, however, is the West Penn MLS (http://westpennmls.com). I believe that you must be a licensed real estate agent or broker to have access to listings, but I know there is a significant cost for access. This is the biggest advantage to using a buying agent, but is not a necessity. The really nice thing is the options for filtering over geographic address, including hand drawing an area,  checking the DOM (says on market), and historical listing information. Other than that, the information is often available elsewhere for free. Believe me, though, once you have access to it, you will never want to go without it!

First glance - Love the Fox Chapel

I grew up in Fox Chapel. For those of you unaware, Ryan Homes is a Pittsburgh-based company, so many of the models are named after areas of Pittsburgh. So, when we visited Cobblestone and toured the Fox Chapel model, we thought that it was kismet, because we loved it! It is a great plan, especially with the morning room and 4' family room extension, which creates the nice open floor plan that we have been looking for.

There are problems, however. First of all, the model, as presented, is approximately $430,000! That is way out of our price range. We don't need everything shown, however, so it looked like it work out. It essentially came down to the elevations available. They were all integral front garage options. Because the current phase V lots are too narrow, there is no way to accommodate a side or rear garage door. This meant having a full flight of steps to get to the front door. Although this is Pittsburgh and lots of steps are common, it is not what we are looking for. We have several relatives who have problems with steps and understand well what an issue it would be for them, and for us when we get older.
We are at an impasse and cannot find a resolution, so it seems like Cobblestone is simply not going to work for us...

In the beginning...

After three years of searching without luck, I was browsing Zillow and noticed this funny little cluster of homes and clicked on it. It was the Zillow icon for new construction, which I had always filtered out because in our minds we could not afford one. I began browsing through the different new construction communities in the North Hills, including North Allegheny and Hampton, but the base model four bedroom homes were at the very top of our price range, so I knew that we wouldn't have the room to buy any upgrades and get what we wanted. That's when I found the Cobblestone development.

We've recently expanded our search into the Quaker Valley and Avonworth school districts and Cobblestone piqued our interest. The prices were $20-30K less than similar homes in other districts, which made them realistic for us. I called the Ryan Homes office and the S&A offices and left voicemails. Michael from Ryan called back that day and spoke to me for almost fifteen minutes and eagerly invited me to come for a visit.

Tomorrow, we head out to Ohio Township...

Note: I never heard from S&A homes. I even had a real estate agent friend of mine reach out to them half a dozen times. They called him back once, but would not follow up. To be fair, I think that they had all of their lots sold, or nearly sold, but why not just tell us that? It was a really bad customer experience.