Building Our New Home

November 16th - Curiosity

Well from our last meeting, we realized that Pulte was a definite no just because of the space-to-price ratio. We did a bit of research and the development where Garland Griffin was a nice, built-up city with a nice, built-up city tax. The Ryan Homes had a high space-to-price ratio in an underdeveloped city with a low city tax.

One of the lessons that we learned from our friends who previously built (and picketed) Ryan was that the base price was just that...base. If you want anything, you'd have to ask for it and how much it costs. The base price was pretty nice, but that might not mean too much if you have to add $100,000 worth of upgrades. Sooo we decided to schedule another meeting to run through some of the features and get a realistic idea of what it would all cost. This was actually a helpful meeting.

What we basically walked through the entire model. Our saleswoman identified all the major upgrades that were made to the model while we asked a ton of questions. The one thing that I do have to point out is that we were notified of the nice, big features that we could add...like a 4' extension here and a 9' ceiling there. However, when it came to some of the more common necessities (umm...i want a light bulb) we had to make sure to ask. We went through every room, and asked a number of different things. How much for a ceiling fan? light? upgrading kitchen cabinets? extra cable outlets? ceramic tile? stain master carpets? ugh...

Anyways, long story short...we sat down with her and priced out room by room, all the things that were needs...and all the the we weren't sure of went onto a wishlist.

On major bonus that we found out in this meeting was that Ryan was offering this HUGE discount on two of their lots in the development. The discount could buy us a few more upgrades while keeping the total price down. The reason she gave for the discount was that most of the areas were already built on, but one of the lots was still empty and they wanted to finish it off...she also said this was their competitive time of season, though I'm not sure what that actually means... (my pal, joe, later informed me that sometimes the city requires a builder to finish off a development before they allow the builder to develop in other areas...)

Well...just a little more to take home with us and think about...

posted by blimpy @ 11:53 AM