Pre Drywall meeting

This week we had a our walk through before drywall goes up.  Everything was as we wanted, no changes needed with wiring.  Since we are coming from an older house it was nice to see all the exterior outlets that come standard.

There was one thing that needed our attention.  The plan our PM showed us for the deck stairs had them wrapping around the corner of the morning room hugging the house.  We don't want that because when we finish the basement down the road the stair would block any windows we would want to put into the morning room basement space.  We asked him to changed that so they would go down from the front of the deck.

Update:

He was able to make the change and have the stairs the way we would like them.

My new deck concern is the light next to the exit of the basement might be under the deck, making it of little use.

They build quick

Once they got the footers in everything went up quick.  We now have a full house sitting there but I will quickly go through everything up till now.  You'll see in the pictures below I picked a few spots on posts to take a picture every time I went.  That way I could see going back how it changed

Here is the lot from the street not much to look at from here I chose a few angles that I would take from each week.  Street Light is pretty much the edge of the property.  This is the lot as it was before any work was done.

3/9/15

Here is it with the Basement dug out

3/27/15

Footers have been dug

3/31/15 and then poured 4/1/15

Forms for walls up

4/6/15

The house is here, some assembly required and walls done

4/11/15

Starting to frame the basement walls.  Every other part was prebuilt and sent on trucks, this was the one thing that was framed on site since every basement lot might be different.

4/22/15 and 4/23/15

Two days later suddenly it gets real

4/25/15

Where we are now from the outside, more things changing on the inside for now.

5/1/15

Apologies

I sorry it has been awhile since I have posted on this board.  Our loan was in under writing and while I say I'm not a superstitious person, I didn't want to get to excited until it felt more for sure.  But we are past all that now.

Here we go

We got an email from our Ryan rep Ryan (I know right?) that prices are going up next week and they were in the middle of a contest so they were anxious for sales the 1st week of March.  Hopefully both of those work in our favor.  Obviously getting a lower price is good, and since they want to make the sale during the contest maybe they will be more will to make deal.  Fingers crossed.

Friday morning is closing on our house and right after that we are meeting with our buying agent to go over everything so we are ready to hopefully sign paperwork this weekend.

I hope everyone had good experiences with their Ryan reps.  We get a really good feeling about ours. We have never felt like he was pushing options on us and we always willing to point out places that we could save and do things later.  Last weekend we went over to show my parents the lot we were looking at and tell Ryan that we close Friday.  We asked him if there has been any interest in our lot and he says there has been a little but nothing that has panned out just people asking about it.  But he said that since we are so close he would hold the lot for us and consider it taken if anyone asked about it.  That was a huge relief for us since we started the whole selling process with the main objective of getting that lot.

History with Ryan

We first found the neighborhood we plan to build in when we were deciding between a smaller starter home in a fun part of town, or the long term raise a family neighborhood back in 2008.

After our house gained value and we saw that a move was possible we started looking again.  At first planning to go to a newer Ryan Homes neighborhood with amazing amenities.  However that neighborhood sold out too quickly of their lots they had contracted with the developer.  There are plenty more lots to build on.  However the rumor we heard is that because the first lots sold out so quickly the developer was asking for too much with the new contract.

So one day I decided to drive past the original Ryan Homes neighborhood and there it was the perfect lot in our eyes, a basement lot with an actual yard.

Growing up in the Midwest we both loved having a basement.  It was the bonus room before they became a thing.  However from all of our looking around through the years we have discovered that in the South the only reason they do basement is if the lots are sloped and they need to for the foundation.  Anytime you find a basement in the South it usually backs up to some woods and you don't get a backyard.

The lot that we are planning to get has road level then a slope at the house for the basement then it levels out for a little so you get a backyard then another slope down to the house behind.  See crude diagram for those that are visual like me.

A Little Background

So weird to figure out how to start these.


Who we are and our story to now.

I'm 32 and my wife is 8 days younger than me.  We have a 2 year old daughter, and plan to have another once we get into the new house.  We met in College in the Midwest, after graduation we moved to LA where we lived for almost 3 years.  LA was fun, we met some nice people but soon figured we didn't see a future there so why waste more time there.  A job offer in Charlotte moved us here.  After renting for 3 months we looked at the home market and after spending crazy amounts on rent in LA we were excited to buy a house and pay less than we did out there.  

We found the perfect starter home 2 bed 1 bath just over 1100 sq ft.  The good thing is we bought in 2008, o wait that wasn't a good thing the market dropped out within a year.  After the 1st year our house had dropped almost 30,000 in value.  Ouch. 

At the time we weren't too concerned as we didn't have any plans of moving for a while. 

Fast forward to early 2011, we are starting to talk about baby plans.  Do we move or do we stay?   But at that time we were still way to underwater in our house to get out.  We decided to continue with baby thinking we had until she was school age to really feel the pressure of moving into a good district.

So now here we are.  The market is rebounding big time, especially our part of town that is getting very popular.  We close on our house next week.  We aren't getting more than we paid but we will at least come out a little on top.  I just keep pinching myself and knocking on wood,  we had the best case happen as a seller.  Our house went on the market we had almost 10 showings the first 5 days and by the first weekend we had 4 offers and accepted one above asking. So lucky.*pinch pinch pinch knock knock knock*

To play the pessimist we are waiting until we are through with closing to sign with Ryan.