It's official!

It's official! We signed our initial agreement last night. It's kind of overwhelming with all of the decisions that need to be made over the first 14-day and 30-day periods. Full mortgage application, exterior colors, finalizing options, and choosing the flooring is just the start! All this over the craziness of Christmas. Ahhhh!

We are so excited. Our daughters are excited, but also anxious about leaving our current house, neighborhood, and friends behind. Also starting at a new school is always a cause for anxiety. Our contact and experience with Avonworth thus far has been stellar, however. Just knowing that we will have our forever home, and that all of our children will be able to stay in the same schools and home until they go to college is the type of stability that we have been working so hard for, for years. This is my first post about our journey, but I will backfill a few posts with our experience and update this blog with everything that happens as we move forward.

I would just like to thank all of the other Ryan Homes bloggers out there who have taken the time to chronicle their experiences. You have all simultaneously given me the confidence to make the decision and the ammunition to fight for the best price and against the pitfalls that they try to lead you into.

Second model, second lot

We are at an impasse... again. The only lots that will fit a Sewickley with an attached garage are highway side and we are not willing to buy one of them. I called Michael, today, to let him know that this was not going to work and we were going to resume our search for an existing home.

Michael is a salesman, and a good one. I knew that he would look into this and do his best to find a solution. I did not expect, however, an immediate response. He responded with, "well... there is ONE lot." Now, this pissed me off, quite frankly. He gave me a line of BS about how we wanted a walkout basement and this other lot would not allow for a rear walkout, only a side walkout. At the same time, I was glad that there was another option. My brother's advice about the lot rang in my ears and I will forever be grateful for it.

So, the bottom line is that there is one other lot, across the street and up the road a bit. I looked it up on the map and it appears to be in a great spot, where there should be a lot less road noise. We'll see...

Location. Location. Location.

I spoke to my brother, who is a real estate agent in Florida, last night. He confirmed a lot of what I thought about the process of building a new home, but gave me one critical insight. "New construction sales people will do ANYTHING that they can to sell the worst lots, first," he told me. All of a sudden, it clicked that it was exactly what they were trying to do.

Today, on my lunch, I drove by the lots that we looked at at dusk last night. Even in the light midday traffic, there was a very noticeable hum from the front yard. I ruined a pair of shoes doing it, but I hiked across the muddy yard to check the noise level from the back of the lot and it was very loud. Loud enough that if you had a cookout in the back yard, you would have to significantly raise your voice constantly to have a conversation. Aside from putting a hideous sound-proofing wall all along the property, if it is even allowed, I don't think that there is anything one can do to mitigate the sound. The worst part of all, however, was that when I left, I went south on Mt. Nebo road, and confirmed that the lots are completely visible from the road. The entire rear of the home and backyard are plainly visible to the main road, and partially visible from the highway.

That was the end of it for both my wife and me. There was no way that those lots would 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.