The Rome Is Where My Home Is

I'm sorry I've been missing for a while. We closed last Thursdat afternoon and have been busy getting settled. I'm extremely happy and I thing GOD for his favor and for continuing to bless my family. I do want to offer a piece of advice. Be persistent with NVR and try to stay ahead of them. All kinds of things will come up as you get closer to closing but do not allow them to tell you that you will not close on your scheduled date.

We're About To Be In There!

Checked my mail today and received the official letter from Ryan Homes.  We have our Pre-Settlement Meeting officially scheduled as well as our settlement date.  I'm so excited.  Lord willing the weather and everything else will cooperate so that we can move forward.

Shout Out to Our PMs

I just want to give a major shout out to our Project Managers, Greg and Ryan. These two men are awesome. They are always around to help, answer questions and reassure us.  They are the epitome of customer service. We are a little more than a month from our scheduled settlement date and at this point I have only excellent things to say about these men. Thank you!

Homeowner's Insurance

I'm shopping around for homeowner's insurance.  Any recommendations? Suggestions? Excellent customer service?

The Journey Continues

My husband spoke to our PM yesterday to check on our progress and address a couple concerns. He was pleased with the conversation. We are ahead of schedule. Thank you Lord for the good weather. We also got a call from Guardian that they will be out this week for wiring. Guardian also reminded us to contact them approximately 2-3 weeks before settlement to schedule installation of our security system. Next week we have our Pre-drywall meeting. Things are moving along. We are so excited and thankful. Praise God!!

Coming along!

We went buy our home yesterday. I stopped saying lot because it is not a lot anymore it has progressed into a home. The framing is done in the house. We were able to go look at each room. The steps were in, the plumbing was done, all the windows and doors are in, tubs are in. I can envision my family living in this house already. I'm so excited. I can't wait until the walls go up. Every time I go out to the house I get tears in my eyes because I see that this dream and the journey we have been on for the last year or so is coming to fruition.

Some of Our Selections

We choose Elevation A with brick front for our Rome.  Here are some of our selections:

Exterior

• Siding - Autumn Beige
• Exterior Trim - Sandy Tan
• Garage Door/Gutter Spout - Desert Tan
• Shutters - Dark Spruce
• Front Door - Cape Royal
• Brick - Falshed Northern Rose
• Roof - Black

Flooring

• Hardwood on all of first floor except Study - Manchester Cherry
• Study - Carpet - Exactly Right Stucco w/ 8 lb padding
• Basement/Stairs/Upstairs - Carpet - Exactly Right Stucco w/8 lb padding
• Laundry Room - Vinyl - Initiator
• Master Bath - Brixton Mushroom Ceramic Tile
• Secondary Baths (Hall/Basement) - Acacia Beige Ceramic Tile

Kitchen

• Stainless Steel Appliances
• Gourmet Island w/Santa Cecelia Granite (I can't remember name of cabinets)

Loft instead of 5th bedroom, sitting area in Master Suite instead of extra bathroom in Room #4

Men at Work

Thank you to my future neighbor Nadase for taking these pictures.  Our house is coming along.  We have windows now and some shingles on the roof.  Thanks Nadase!

NVR - No Customer Satisfaction

I continue to read all kinds of negative things about NVR. I've experienced some and continue to experience bad service. I'm glad to know I'm not the only one. On the other hand, how are they allowed to continue to get away with their lack of customer service, accountability, etc among other things?  I sent an email to the loan specialist on Saturday and I have not received any type of response yet. There has to be something consumers/customers can do. It's a monopoly!  In order to get incentives from Ryan we have to use NVR. They feel like they can do whatever they want whenever they want.  Aren't we the ones spending our hard earned money?

It Takes a Village to Build a Rome

We would like to thank my future neighbor Nadese for stopping by our lot to check the progress of our home yesterday.  I was pleasantly surprised at the progress.  I can't wait to check it out in person tomorrow.  We have some nice neighbors and everyone is looking out for each other and their homes.  I plan to reciprocate the favor for my future neighbors as well.  We are truly blessed and thankful that we are moving into such a family oriented neighborhood.  I will post pictures of our visit tomorrow.

Pics of the Progression of our Rome

Progress

We stopped by our lot today. Coming right along. Foundation in, backfill looks done and the cement is on the garage and the basement floors. The basement doesn't look like its as big as it should be.   The framework should happen next week. I'm very thankful for the progress

NVR -I'm Sorry For The Delay

We received an email at 5:50 am yesterday morning from the loan specialist.  She just finally remembered to send us our loan approval. The letter was dated September 7 and we got it in an email on September 18. We broke ground on September 10.  With that being said, I just don't like that we are following guidelines and neither of these companies are.

Blinds

Where is everybody getting their blinds from?  Any recommendations?  Any deals to Ryan Home owners?  CTI, Next Day Blinds?

Building Blocks to the Rome

We are so excited.  We went to our lot today and they have done a lot in a week. We have foundation, electricity, water, cable lines. We met some of our future neighbors Including Nadese and even caught a glimpse of Sheldon and his family moving in.  The smile on his face when he drove by was priceless.  I can't wait until we get to that point.

After the Contract Was Signed

So we sold our house, moved in with relatives and signed our purchasing agreement in July.  We thought we could start our building pretty soon and be in the new house by some time in November.  The SR told us that our estimated delivery date would be some time in December.  All the color went out of my face.  I wondered what was going to take so long.  Our SR told us that we had to wait in line to break ground.  OMG!!! She told us we would be on the schedule to break ground around September 15.  I got really weak.  I didn't want to stay with relatives for 6 months.  The SR told us that there was a free week to break ground on August 27 but we would need to schedule our appointments with all the vendors ASAP.  So we scheduled the meeting with NVR 5 days later.  We took all of our paperwork and met with the loan officer and she told us that they would try to get the loan approval in the next 2-3 weeks so that we could break ground on the 27th.  We had our meeting with CTI and Guardian and put in our change orders with the SR in less than a week.  We thought we were all set.  As August 27 drew closer we had not heard anything from anyone.  We forgot we had to have a pre-construction meeting before breaking ground.  So my husband and I were thinking "no news is good news".  Huh!!! At 9:00 pm on August 23, we received an email from the loan officer asking for more documentation.  What she didn't realize was that we would read the email right away (thank goodness for smartphones).  I had the documentation.  I wrote back to her immediately asking why she would ask for documentation at 9:00 at night.  She went on the explain that underwriting needed it and they had meetings (Ryan and NVR) for the last two weeks about us .  I told her they were trying this as a stall tactic to reschedule us among other things (too much to type).  I sent our SR an email and asked her if we were going to break ground on the 27th.  I didn't get a response until I resent the email the next day.  I finally got an answer that we were not going to break ground because we would have needed an approval by August 16 to break ground then.  We didn't know that. I sent a harsh email to the SR, then she forwarded to the loan officer.  Both were trying to explain themselves. It's been all these excuses etc so bottom line is we were back to breaking ground around Sept 10.  SR set up meeting with PM 4 days before and there were some issues. We wanted a flat lot (or as flat as possible) so that we could walk out to the yard from with morning room with only 2-3 steps and a welled walk up exit from basement. Well PMsaid the basement would be a walkout and there would be about 9 steps coming out of the morning room. We were livid. The PM will see what he can do. If not what is Ryan going to do?  We paid for a welled walk up basement in our contract.  I'm just not happy with answers when we run into issues. Stay tuned. Going tomorrow to see what progress has been made.

We Have a Hole

We stopped by the lot last night and we have a hole. *doing the happy dance*. Let the building begin!  I hope this is good news for my neighbor on Lot 28 RickNadese.  Monday should be your day. No pic because I wasn't able to upload from my iPhone/iPad.

Our Story From The Beginning

I apologize in advance if I leave out anything or if I jump around. My husband decided he would post as well so he will be able to add some things that I may miss. We first stopped by the Ryan Homes sales office in Fairwood on December 30, 2011. Angela set us up with an appointment on January 8, 2012.  My husband and I were in the middle of renovating our home.  We looked at several homes (short sales, foreclosures, and some resales) and just became frustrated. We weren't finding everything we wanted so we decided to try new construction.

So we spent over 4 hours with Angela going over the Rome and it's feature and options.  I didn't know the whole process so to make a long story short we weren't ready to purchase. We realized there was nothing we could do until we sold our house. Angela told us she could refer us to an agent to come and assess the house to see if we were on the right track. We waited a while before we contacted the broker. Every day I looked at that Ryan Homes website and dreamed of the day we would live in the Rome.

We completed the major renovations and met with the agent and signed a listing agreement on March 24. We didn't put the house on the market immediately the agent set up a meeting with a home stager and she told us things to do to make the house more attractive (change paint color, touch up, add plants, etc) for the showings.  We officially placed our townhouse on the market on April 28.

We After several more trips to meet the SR, the only way to purchase was to do a contingency. So I was so very impatient with the selling process. We received a contract on June 19 and the potential buyers wanted to go to settlement on July 10. This actually was pretty quick. We called our SR to tell her of the settlement date and to ask when we could come down and sign the contract. Due to her busy schedule we couldn't meet until July 22.   I really cut this story short.  You all don't need to know my frustration with our agent and the closing process. I'm tired of typing. I'll talk about the process from the contract to breaking ground in my next post.

Double Ovens

Ou SR told us there was no way to have double ovens in a Rome. I just read a blog where someone has them. I'm a little agitated. Does anyone in Fairwood have a Rome with a double oven?

The Time Has Finally Come

Our PM told us yesterday that he had us scheduled for Monday, Septemer 10. He told us there could be a hold up. He said he would know definitely by today and he would call us if there was an issue. He said if we didn't hear from him then we will be good to break ground on Monday. Well....................we didn't hear from him so I guess we'll break ground Monday. WOO HOO! YIPPEE!  I'm so excited. Once I figure out how to post pics then I will track our progress. Pray for us

I'm starting this blog today because we had our Pre-construction meeting today. I think I should have started it the day we made our first visit to the Ryan Homes model in December 2011. After months of waiting we are scheduled to start building on Monday, Sept 10. I'll go over all my notes and post about our experience from December 2011 until now. Technically, we haven't been waiting this long to break ground. We signed our purchasing agreement towards the end of July. It took a lot to get to that point. I'll share that as well. As soon as I catch up with that, then I'll share our building experience and hopefully post some pictures. Please be patient with me. This is my first time blogging.