Building Our New Home

November 21st - Repricing

Well, after the last meeting, we did much more research. We found that there were a few more places in the area than we originally expected. We also realized that the development was pretty close to a major mall and shopping center making it pretty easy to pick thing up. There were a lot of conversations between Beck and myself...not to mention getting advice from our parents. My mom and dad visited the prior Friday and they absolutely loved the place. They did have a good amount of advice in terms of what else to ask...and what might be nice upgrades.

We schedule today's meeting to walk through the lots and area homes in development. We also had a few changes to our estimated pricing sheet. Becky's dad joined us for this meeting. It sounded like he liked the model and brought up some good questions too. Gotta love having the experience of parents on your side...makes like easier (though, don't ask me that 10 years ago).

One of the nice things about today was being able to go through one of the same models in development. This house didn't have very many upgrades, which was good to give us an idea of what we wanted to do. I'm sure they take you through this on purpose, because every room looked a lot smaller without the upgrades. I think also without finished flooring or painted walls, everything looks cramped.

We came back and repriced a bunch of things... Our underlying rules for picking things were

1. Necessities - lights, plumbing rough-ins, stain master carpets, garage door opener, outlets, laundry tub, etc.
2. Structural Items (thing you can't easily upgrade later) - 4' extensions, 9' ceiling, Morning room, sitting room, fireplace, windows
3. Upgraded items (upgrade the rest, based on price) - upgraded lighting fixtures, ceiling fans, etc.

We made the definite decision to drop the finished basement, which was a tough choice. This was hard to let go, just 'cuz it'll be a bit of a pain to do later. It would have been nice to have this wrapped up in the mortgage and not have to worry about it later. The bottom line was that we could finish it later...while other options would have been difficult. We just agreed that we'd make it a priority to complete.

The other thing we're consider of dropping is the brick facing on the front side of the house. There's a huge difference in the look of the house between the brick and the vinyl siding...it definitely looks nicer with the bricks and it wouldn't be something that we can do easily later. With the extra money saved from this we could add some of the more aesthetic/structural options.

Before making the decision to do this, we decided that we needed a bit more time to let the choices settle. I wanted to go in to a meeting knowing that I'm gonna purchase a home rather than being convinced to buy. What we found out was that we could "reserve" the lot for a few days by giving them a $1000 check. The check was completely refundable one way or the other, so no harm done to do so...and we did.

We scheduled another meeting for Friday, November 25th. If we wanted to move forward, we'd have to come up with 7% down...fun!

posted by blimpy @ 12:17 PM