Week 15 - Snow Foundation

This week we had even more snow!  This meant yet another week of what appears to be no progress at all.  (Unless you count a newly completed foundation of snow, that is.)  We are now officially getting nervous about the delays.  When we chose our lot, one of the main factors in our decision was the closing date (since we are in a very fast-selling townhome community that is building in phases, the closing dates of each phase are pre-scheduled).  Our planned closing date coincides very nicely with the end of our apartment lease, giving us a little buffer room to get settled in our new home while saving us money by not leaving us with an overlap month of rent plus mortgage or with a lease-breaking fee.  Unfortunately, the start of the real winter weather this year coincided with our planned breaking ground week.  We've been repeatedly told that all of this sort of thing is built in to the planned building time frame, but now we are down to one week until we have to give our official notice not to renew the lease at our apartment.  We are faced with a difficult decision.  We were originally scheduled (and have repeatedly been reassured despite any possible weather issues that we remain on schedule) to close on May 15th.  However, we are now hearing from our PM that given all of the delays, closing may be pushed backed until "late May or early June."  Particularly from reading other blogs, we realize this isn't much of a delay, especially given the weather, but our lease ends June 14th, and, again, we have to give notice by this coming Friday as to whether we are renewing for any length of time or not.  We liked the "buffer month" afforded by the May 15th closing because we will also have a newborn along with our soon to be 1-year-old by that time (we are due at the end of April), so a little extra time to take care of a few things like getting blinds installed and getting everything moved in without a rush would be helpful.  We aren't sure if we can risk a possible "early June" closing given that "early" would need to be early enough to allow us to move out of our apartment on time (completely out and cleaned by June 14th).  We also aren't sure of who's information we can trust - we have also been told that our PM's estimate is really a worst-case-scenario number to be safe, and that we will likely still close on May 15th as they have been known to make up the time and as a much worse winter was actually expected when the timelines of the phases were originally scheduled.  We hope to speak to our PM and SR tomorrow to get a better idea of what to expect so that we can best make our apartment lease decision by the end of the week as we must.  Hopefully we'll have much better news to report next week!

Week 14 - Snow Progress

During the past week we had very cold weather, ice, and snow.  This mix meant another week of very little progress.  Since things just started to thaw out this weekend, that is understandable.  The biggest change this week wasn't actually anything to do with our home; the biggest change is that there has been a large delivery of wood.  So, I guess at least we're all set up for whenever things are able to really get moving.  Hopefully that will be soon!  We also reached out to our PM this week since we hadn't received our expected update last week.  As we expected, it was because there was not much of anything to report due to the weather.  He again reassured us that once they can get the roof up, weather isn't really a factor anymore, so we are just hoping that that time comes soon.

Week 13 - Underground Plumbing Going In

Not too much new to report this week.  When we visited the site, along with all of the snow we could see the the underground plumbing has been started.  We weren't expecting much progress because it has been very cold and snowy here lately.  We also didn't get our expected call from our PM this week, so hopefully we'll be hearing from him soon.  Hopefully we'll get some better weather this week, and hopefully there will be more to see next weekend!

Week 12 - Foundation Continues

This weekend when we visited our lot we saw that more of the foundation had been poured, including some of the back wall.  Again, our foyer is the section on the left, and our garage is the section on the right.  The build in the development that is much further along (delivery next month!) really made some neat progress, too.  Our project manager mentioned that underground plumbing would likely be done this week, but we couldn't get close enough to tell.  We can't wait to see what things look like next week!

 

Week 11 - Foundation Begun

We have broken ground!  It was very exciting to see some actual build progress when we went to visit this weekend!  The foundation has begun to be poured and some sort of walls have begun.  The left section will be our foyer and the right section will be our garage.  We also looked at some of the other builds already in progress in our development, and they've come a long way this week!  It is neat to be able to see what is up ahead for us in the near future.

Week 10 - Weather Delay

We were scheduled to break ground on Wednesday, but that ended up being an extremely cold day (too cold for pouring concrete for foundation) with a bit of snow, so our start is moved to next week.  A bit anti-climatic, but we visited the lot this weekend, anyway.  It looks like they're getting things ready; sign is gone and ground and been moved and leveled a bit.  We find all of the changes exciting, so it was still worth the trip!

Week 9 - Preparing to Break Ground

Not much new to report this week, we're just waiting for ground to break!  We went for a drive to see our lot this weekend (even though we know nothing is scheduled to happen until next week).  It was a neat surprise to see some construction equipment parked on our lot, even if just to see something different and to get even more excited about what is to come!

Week 8 - Pre-Construction Meeting

On Monday we had our pre-construction meeting.  It was nice to meet our project manager; he was friendly and informative.  We went through the blueprints and initialed a lot of stuff.  It is a shame that you can't get a copy of those, just for the novelty factor, but apparently at some point someone had a copy and gave it to another builder to build outside of Ryan Homes so now you can only get a quick peek at the pre-construction meeting!

Our build is still on schedule as to what we were told when we first chose our lot; our house should be ready for closing mid-May, and ground will be broken the week after next barring any major weather issues.  Our project manager assured us that possible weather delays are built into the schedule, so while they technically have a ton of leeway with the completion time, they expect to remain on schedule, especially since our community has many other builds to go following ours.  He also told us that we can expect biweekly updates from him, usually on Fridays, and that we are free to contact him with any questions or if we want to see the house up close (absolutely no visiting unsupervised in our community for liability reasons).

We also took a look at our lot again today - everything has been cleared and readied for ground breaking!  We are looking forward to following the progress over the next couple of months.

Week 7 - NVR Approval

This week we got a call (followed by a package of paperwork) alerting us to our official NVR approval (though it isn't really that official - since we don't close for several months, I'm pretty sure we have to go through the entire process again closer to the end).  We also were able to speak to our underwriter for the first time, and we are very pleased with him!  It has been frustrating to continue to have little to no communication or response from our loan officer so far, though he was very friendly and helpful the one time we were able to speak with him.  The underwriter has also been very friendly and helpful, but with the added bonus of prompt responses, which we value greatly!

We will continue to gather the paperwork we anticipate needing closer to closing, and we hope to avoid some of the delays and annoyances others have mentioned by getting in as much as we can as early as we can.

We also finally were able to finalize our backsplash and bathroom listello choices.  We are very happy to have finally found what we know we are sure we want and to have just about all of the other paperwork finalized now that we can finish up all change orders.

Week 6 - NVR Initial Info

We finally received our "overnighted" package from NVR on Monday (we had been told it was sent last Wednesday, but the package clearly showed it was sent on Friday for the next business day).  There was a ton of paperwork to go over.  We scheduled a phone meeting with our NVR guy for that Monday evening to go through it all together, but he never called.  We let our sales rep know, and then we heard from our NVR guy first thing the next morning.  He was very apologetic and rescheduled a phone meeting with us for Friday.  We spent a lot of the week researching what everything in the mortgage paperwork meant since this is our first mortgage.  When we finally did talk to him on Friday, we found him to be very friendly, helpful, and straightforward, and, as we have been a little leary given the almost nonexistent communication, we were pleasantly surprised.  The good faith estimate from NVR is pretty good; the rate is great, but the closing costs are a lot higher than we were expecting, largely due to living in a high tax area and the very high NVR administrative costs.

Prior to finding our Strauss, we had been pre-approved by a small bank recommended by our realtor.  The small bank greatly impressed us; we were able to speak directly to the VP who personally handled all of our information, was very communicative and prompt with information, and was immensely helpful with explaining our likely options to us.  When we surprisingly found the Strauss, we were offered the common incentive of $12,000 for a finished basement if we went with NVR.  We shared this information with our realtor, who was pretty sure the small bank wouldn't be able to beat that (since not using NVR would mean a $12,000 higher purchase price), but she asked if she could share the information with the VP anyway.  Surprisingly, we heard from her the next day with the message that the VP would like to try to beat the $12,000 incentive.  We had a phone meeting with him after our meeting with our NVR guy, and he sent us his good faith estimate with a great rate that did actually end up beating NVR's offer slightly, even with the additional $12,000 tacked on to the purchase price.  We were pleasantly surprised.  Our sales rep said that NVR works very smoothly with Ryan Homes, and that despite our initial disappointment in our NVR loan officer's communication, he was really one of the best and it was just a crazy time.  He also told us that NVR would probably fight to keep us since our credit is excellent, so we will contact them tomorrow to make them aware of the offer from the small bank to see if they can at least meet it.

Since there is so much time before we close, nothing mortgage-wise is actually final yet, so we still have a long time wait to see what the actual rates and costs end up being.