We are all set to break ground!

Alright been a few weeks since I have made an update, so in the optimistic belief that someone eventually reads this, I will provide some updates. First, we have been APPROVED! Got email from loan officer confirming full loan approval. Have to say, compared to some of the horror stories I have read on other blogs, my experience with NVR has been painless. I was able to supply each of their requested documents within 24 hours, and only had 1 or 2 additional documents to provide once the loan hit the underwriters desk. Speaking of underwriting, it only took a little over a week to get full approval.
         Shortly after getting our green light on the loan we got the call to sit down for our pre construction meeting. Our PM seems like a good guy that takes pride in his work, so I am cautiously optimistic that I our construction will go smoothly. Meeting was pretty uneventful, our lot was staked out shortly prior to our arrival so we took the time to walk it with him. It was actually great to see just how much yard we would end up. We are all set to break ground the first week of May. Hopefully all this rain will pass and they can get the basement started with out delays!

Here is our lot. Red outline reflects outer border of the lot, blue is the area that will be "disturbed" for construction. The pink is the area permitted for future expansion. I am very happy with the drive way size, we will be able to hold 4 cars easily. I cant wait to start seeing this come together!

NVR so far...

So, we are on the NVR train currently, not totally sure we will keep them through the whole process but will let the process play out and see how they compare against my back up lender. I knew going into the process that being prepared was going to help alot. So before sitting down for the first meeting, I had provided about 99% of the needed documents via email. Keep those emails people, you might need to resend. So, when the day arrived to sit down with my LO, it was pretty uneventful. Signed the mountain of paperwork, and got the few missing documents to her over the next day or so. Today I was contacted by the processor to collect a few more documents and send a few again, after which i was informed that my file was off to underwriting. He is optimistic for a decision by next Friday. So, we are all caught up. Nothing left to do now but hurry up and wait. Cant wait to break ground!

Fun part, options and Elevation

So we decided we wanted the Sorrento, and we wanted the the finished basement. This neighborhood is a little different than other Ryan Communities i have read about in other blogs. In an effort to "simplify" the build process they decided to make standard a number of popular selections, and create packages to upgrade the kitchen and floors incrementally. The bad news is you can't deviate from the package. You want the white cabinets? You have to buy the premier holy crap level package at 20k! We didn't do that. Standard package gives base cabinets, carpet, it does have upgraded padding standard, and vynal floors. Because this neighborhood is so hot, all we got was 3k for closing costs, no other incentives. So, our options were:
Finished basement. 25k
Two car garage. 5k (standard concrete driveway, free belt drive garage door opener,yay)
Upgraded garage door. 450
Hardwood main level. 5k
Owners bathroom. 5k
Basement bathroom rough in. 1800
Elevation c with stone 6500
Kitchen island. 1495
4 ceiling fan rough ins.900
Trex decking stairs from upstairs to back yard. 3395.00

 Standard package, but we got hardwood down stairs

 Our elevation, but forward garage. We choose black shutters and red door

Grey siding

3 option is our stone choice

Lets get caught up shall we...

So we are early in the process but have already accomplished alot. This whole deal started about 3 weeks ago. My wife and I decided it was time to find a house again for us and our two little ones. We built our last house through a different builder so we were familiar with the process. That said, we started by looking at existing houses, looked at a few, nothing really drawing us in. The last house we looked at was a Ryan Homes sienna, we liked it, so we put in an offer. Well lucky for us, the owner was stubborn and declined two offers flat,no counter. Good riddance. This got us thinking, we liked the Ryan Homes house, why not just build again? We both knew where we wanted to build. We scoped out the neighborhood a year ago when it first opened and thought it was overpriced. Well, time has a funny way of changing prospective.
      The location is perfect, a fact many others apparently agreed with because in just a year most of the neighborhood has been sold! This certainly lent a degree of urgency to our decision to move forward or not, add to that pressure the fact that only 2 basement lots remained to build on, only 1 on a cul-de-sac, and our minds were pretty well made up.
     We started off leaning towards the Sienna, but after careful review of the Sienna VS the Sorrento we decided that the basement layout on the Sorrento, along with the bigger kitchen would better suit our needs. The fact that it was 20k cheaper to start also meant we could get a few nice extras. Ill get into those extras shortly in another post.
      So, we dropped a 5k deposit, signed the paperwork and scheduled my sit down with NVR.

New to this blogging thing

Hello! Welcome to my happy place. Here I will share with you any and all my thoughts and experiences related to building our new Ryan Home. "Why do this" you ask? Pretty sure I want to talk about this alot more than the people around me want to hear about it lol. This allows me to say whats on my mind and maybe, just maybe, help someone else out as they read through my experiences. So hang on tight, lets get this story started! (And caught up lol)