All's Well That Ends Well . . .

We closed today!  It has been 17 months since we first signed our purchase and sale contract with Ryan Homes and it has been quite a journey.  There have been lots of delays and lots of frustrations along the way.  But we are finally done!  Here are a couple of pictures we took at the settlement office with our loan officer - she's been our loan officer for 17 months!!

The house turned out beautifully and right now we are just thrilled to be closed and moving forward with our lives.  Here we are with our keys!!

I will have some follow up posts about our NVR Mortgage experience - would make a good Halloween story.  Lol

I will also have some additional posts on my thoughts and tips on the build process.

But today was a good day!

Final Walkthrough and 3rd Party Inspection

So we are just about done.  We had our final walkthrough with our construction manager on Friday.  The house looks amazing!!  We are very excited to be almost finished with our build and have already started picking out/ arguing over furniture.  Lol  The final walkthrough took about two hours.  Our construction manager took us through every room and floor of the house and explained all of the major systems, the electric panel, water main pipes, gas fireplace, garage door, etc.

We are actually getting some really great energy efficiency and comfort systems that we did not expect.  We have two zoned heating and air conditioning and on the second floor we actually have two thermostats.  One thermostat just controls our master bedroom and closet because those are over the garage and a second thermostat for the rest of the second floor, but both are part of zone 2.  There is a thermostat on the first floor for zone 1.  We are getting a tankless water heater.  I may update later about how well this works, but we are excited about this feature.

Our house uses electric and gas.  We have a gas stove, gas dryer, gas fireplace and furnace.  We have an electric oven.  I'm glad we were able to set it up that way.

So we had our 3rd party inspector meet us during the final walkthrough and he did his inspection while we worked with our construction manager.  I would definitely recommend a 3rd party inspector - at either the pre-dry wall inspection and/ or the final inspection.  We only used a 3rd party inspector for the final inspection similar to the inspection you would get before buying an existing home.

The biggest thing he found was that the gas line was not hooked up to the furnace in the attic - basically if this was left undone we would have no heat on the second floor and would be wondering why.  Eek!  This seems like a big deal and I'm grateful he caught it.

So with a few final items to be corrected, we anticipate closing this coming week.  Wish us luck!

The Good . . .

I walked through the house on Sunday and took a few pictures.  It looks really good and we are excited.

Here is the kitchen.  I love it.  I have never had a double oven so I am looking forward to that.  I think the cafe lights over the kitchen island look great.  I did not think the standard appliances would be all that great but they seem pretty good so I may not sell them and get something else.

We got the morning room upgrade and I love it.

Pictures of the family room/ great room.  I love that we got hardwood floors on the entire first floor.

Staircase

Finally our master bathroom - these pictures do not do it justice.  It really looks great.  I'm glad we got a tiled floor in the shower.

The Bad . . .

So I finally had a chance to walk through the house since the flooring has been put down, lighting installed and the appliances have been put in.  The house looks lovely and is coming together nicely, but (and with Ryan Homes there is always a but) there are a fair number of issues that we noticed that need to be fixed.  Here are a few of them:

Here are cabinets in the laundry room.  As you can see the knobs are uneven.

The stairs were recently stained to match the first floor hardwood floors.  This was done in a pretty sloppy way, but I assume they plan to clean this up before closing.

More troublesome, it appears that the builder started adding a carpet runner, which is an upgrade we did not get, and then realized the mistake and pulled it up, but the staples remain.

The stairs leading to the basement need some attention where drywall is showing through.

More issues with the trim around the basement stairs

This is a fallen recessed light from the basement that needs to be fixed.

Finally this is a minor thing, but the gutter on the front of the house is bent.

In addition one of the windows is broken.  It broke during installation, but it still has not been replaced.  The garage door is bent and is being replaced as well.  So as you can see there are a fair number of trim and finishing that needs to be taken care of before we close.

Moving Right Along

So I have not been able to keep up with this blog and match the pace of our home construction.  Construction started in late July and here we are on September 20 and our house is scheduled to be completed by October 14.  Here are a few pictures of the first floor since the drywall went up.

The first picture is a picture of the exterior of the home with siding and windows.  The second picture is in the entrance way looking into the dining room.  In an earlier post I mentioned that at the pre-dry wall inspection we noticed that these arches were not in.  That was corrected in the entrance to the dining room.  The archway entrance to the living room is still not correct.  The stairs and the stair railing are in as well.

Here is the kitchen.  The cabinets and granite turned out very nicely.  At this point they were covered while the house was undergoing a second painting over the dry wall.  The appliances will be delivered towards the end of the month.

Here is the "activity center" organization upgrade in the mudroom from the garage.  I think it will be very useful for the boys to store their backpacks and easily locate them in the morning before school.

Final picture from the first floor is a picture of the coffered ceiling in the family room.  I'm glad we chose to add recessed lighting along with the ceiling fan rough in, but we will definitely need a telescopic light changer pole.  Lol

Pre-Dry Wall Inspection and Observations

So we had our pre-dry wall inspection and walkthrough this week.  We did not take a 3rd party inspector with us on this walkthrough but I plan to do that in the next couple of weeks.  On the one hand I marvel at how much has been done and what a great house it is going to be, at the same time there have been a number of strange blunders that do not inspire tons of confidence.

For example, in the basement the framing for the bathroom rough-in was a foot and half off so that needs to be re-done otherwise we would not be able to have a bathroom.  Our construction manager caught this himself, but he said it was due to a plans and drawing error.  WTF?  One thing you assume when you buy a house like this from a big developer is that the drawings are pretty much cookie-cutter set in stone so this was a surprising revelation.  The second basement error is that the plumbing rough-in for our bar (something my husband wanted)  was accidentally put in the middle of the basement floor instead of along a wall in front of the stairs as we agreed.  Our construction manager assured us this plumbing error would also be fixed, but again weird.

I am attaching these two photos of the front of the house.  In the first you will see the house partially framed, but no windows over the garage or door.  My husband observed that we were missing windows over the garage and over the front door.  We sent a note to the construction manager and after a couple of days he said they just had not gotten to it and sent the second picture showing the added windows, but I really think they forgot or didn't realize the windows were missing until we sent a note.

Finally if you have seen recent pictures of the Avalon you know they have curved archways leading to the family and formal dining room and in the doorways leading to the kitchen and great room.  It appeared that these arches had only been done for the doorways leading to the kitchen and great room.  My husband pointed out that this feature seems to be missing from our home and our construction manager was not sure about it.  It was not until we took a quick look at the Avalon across the street that is closer to being finished that our construction manager could see what we meant.  Again weird that my husband needed to point out this very standard feature appeared to be missing from our home.

All of this just gives me a stomachache.  I realize that I liked the idea of building a house more than building it.  Building it puts you right in the sausage factory and I don't like hanging in the sausage factory - I'm not sure I want to see how it's done or in some cases pointing out how it is not being done.  But my husband has been really enjoying the process and stays on top of everything.

They are expecting to get the drywall delivered in the middle of next week, and while they rushed us to have this walkthrough, I suspect they will not be able to start the drywall process until closer to the end of the month.  That's my update for now.

Big Update and We've Been Framed!

So for a variety of reasons I have not been updating this blog, but that stops now.  So let's get to it!   At the end of June our house finally broke ground!!  And as most people know once Ryan Homes finally gets started things start to go really fast.

It took a couple of weeks for Ryan Homes to fully clear our lot and and start the foundation.  But once that was done they quickly put up the temporary foundation posts.

Then all of a sudden the foundation was in and framing began.

Our construction manager has been great.  He has been great about answering questions even though he is working on five houses at once.  Please see earlier posts regarding the year long delay in the start of this community and why Ryan Homes is working hard to get everyone in their homes by the end of the year.  My husband visits the site every Thursday and our construction manager always spends time with him.  He is organized and patient.  We are feeling very good about things so far.

Right now we are scheduled to have our pre-dry wall meeting on August 10.  As others have advised I will try to get a third party inspector in just to make sure everything is on track.  But so far we are excited, just need to pull my pennies together to pay for this thing.  I may do a post in the next week or so on the latest from NVR mortgage - always more exciting than it should be.  

Pre-Construction Meeting and New Construction Start Date

So we had our pre-construction meeting on Thursday May 26 with our sales representative and our construction manager.  After so much time the meeting was both a pleasant relief and somewhat awkward, with our sale representative and construction manager clearly feeling a little anxious about the long delays and wanting to make sure we understood everything and were ready to get started.


And I'll be honest, a lot has changed in a year.  The delays and limbo have taken a toll on my family.  We have all been crammed into a 2 bedroom apartment for 11 months that we were only planning to stay in for 3 months.  My sons did not want to change schools, but were excited about finally each having his own room.  Eleven months later and they are still sharing a room.  We have all questioned whether this was a good idea or something we rushed into without doing enough research on Ryan Homes.

But here we are.  Going through the selections again I was struck by what a large beautiful home we picked out and I can see why last May we signed a contract to have that dream become reality.  We signed up to finally have a big, beautiful adult home - we thought we were "adulting" like crazy.  Lol
But as is often the case things did not turn out as planned.  But I am hopeful that once construction starts and we get to have the fun experience of watching our dream home get built that this long delay will start to become a distant memory.  But so far, not so much.

In terms of the meeting itself, we learned that the start date for our house has been moved up from June 13 to June 8.  Our construction manager will be starting a new house in our phase each week through early July.  I know Ryan Homes is anxious to complete this development that has cost them much more money than they anticipated.  I hope the accelerated schedule does not mean they will cut corners, but I take heart with the fact that I know Howard County is very strict and will closely monitor what is being done.  We also learned that instead of a bioretention pond for stormwater management we will have a buried dry well.  I looked up these systems on Howard County's Department of Public Works website.  On the one hand I thought the bioretention pond took up a good part of the front lawn of the house, so I'm happy not to have it, but the buried dry well seems like it may be more work to maintain and could cause more problems over the long haul if it gets backed up.  I will be asking more questions about this system.   That's it for now, I will update again with pictures once construction starts.


 

We Just Scheduled a Pre-Construction Meeting!

Hello!  I'm back!  Well it is almost a year to the day that my husband and I first signed a contract with Ryan Homes to purchase a new home in a small development called Montgomery Crossing.  If you have followed this blog, and I know there are one or two of you exactly that have, you know that our house was originally slated to be finished in October 2015.  But it turned out that despite what Ryan Homes initially told us (and what they say they understood) the developer did not have permit approval to build the road and infrastructure to be able to build homes on the land.  So our house was not started last year.  In fact it took the developer eight months to get such approval.  But after that very long wait, which included angry phone calls, and additional funds towards closing, we are finally getting started.

Hooray!  We are going to our pre-construction meeting this month and our house is scheduled to begin construction in mid-June.  We are beyond thrilled.  But until I see a big hole in the ground, I'm not celebrating quite yet, but this is definitely progress.

It's 2016 and We're Still Waiting . . .

So back in September I wrote that I was not going to update this blog again until my house started, well it is March 15, 2016 and my house has still not started.  We are beyond frustrated at this point, and it seems we are not alone.  In fact none of the houses in our "second phase" has started because no plumbing or sewer or road has been installed.  There has pretty much been no activity at our development since Ryan Homes hastily sold all of the lots during the middle of last year.

During this process the most annoying aspect has been the lack of information and communication from Ryan Homes.  Our sales representative called us once a month from September through November with cryptic updates, and she never had any specific information about the delays or the house start.  It was really astounding.

So I must say I was surprised when at the end of February we got some encouraging news from our sales representative.  It seems that the developer that Ryan Homes has been working with has finally received final sign offs from the county on the water and sewer plans for the development and can now start on the infrastructure and site development.  And what's more - in recognition of all of the delays Ryan Homes is offering us an additional $5,000 towards closing costs - if we use NVR Mortgage of course.  We met with our sales representative in early March and went back through our choices - it has been so long that it was nice to go through everything again.  If all goes well, and at this point I will assume nothing, our house should start in June or July.  So essentially our house will be ready one year after we thought it would be ready.

That being said until they break ground we will continue to feel like we are in a holding pattern and were duped by a home seller more focused on tying up our deposit than making sure they deliver our house in a timely manner.

"It's Not Us, it's the Developer!"

So no our house has not broken ground yet, and no we do not have a new start date.  So we are still in a frustrating holding pattern with Ryan Homes.

We have been waiting for our house to start since July 2015.  It has been a frustrating situation as everytime we are given a likely start date it changes.  And I have learned something during this process that I think all people considering a build with Ryan Homes should know.  While under your purchase and sale agreement you are buying a lot and a house from Ryan Homes, according to my sale representative Ryan Homes is only responsible for the home part.  Yeah - doesn't make a lot of sense.

But according to my sales representative Ryan Homes works with a local developer who is responsible for assembling the property and preparing the lots for the build.  Once the developer has done that, Ryan Homes buys lots as needed to build its homes.  But Ryan Homes apparently has little control over how quickly the local developer can assemble lots, get site improvement permits or complete the site work.  And that has been the delay for our development.  The local developer does not have site approvals and so our lots are not ready and so we wait.  How long - who knows, because the answer from Ryan Homes is always "it's not us, it's the developer".