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.