NVR Mortgage Meeting

Within a week of signing the purchase agreement, we had to meet with NVR Mortgage to get approved for our mortgage. You have to meet with them even if you are planning to get a mortgage somewhere else.  We were planning to use NVR anyway since we get $15,000 in closing costs covered if we go through them plus we bank with Ally, which doesn't offer mortgages. Our loan officer emailed us a list of all of the documents we needed to bring with us to the meeting within a day or so after signing the purchase agreement. The fee for the loan application was $550. We emailed all of our documents to the loan officer in advance, which made our meeting go quickly. Our loan officer was very friendly and easy to work with. When we showed up he had already filled out a lot of the paperwork and ran our credit report.  They use all three bureaus and pulled reports on both of us.  They use the middle score of person with the lowest scores for the application.  If you don't have the full down payment already in your account you will have to fill out a budget worksheet, so NVR can see that you have a plan to save for the down payment.  We filled out a lot of forms for NVR, state, and federal.  We got a copy of all the paperwork including our credit reports at the end of the meeting.  We also got an updated copy of our estimated closing costs based on today's mortgage rates, but this didn't really mean much since we hadn't made your tile and flooring selections.  We were approved within a week of our meeting. 

Homesite Reservation on our Second Visit to Greenbelt Station

About a month after our first visit, we went back to view the model home at Greenbelt Station again after viewing other houses in the area.  I had crunched the numbers and knew we could definitely afford a Strauss townhome while living comfortably and paying off student loans within the next couple years.  Still my husband was waiting on his bar exam results, so we were going to hold off on purchasing until November.  We showed up to the model and about 5 more homes had sold in the past month and the base price had increased $5,000.  We walked through the house with this information in mind.  Once again we loved everything we saw.  This house was perfect for us.  We knew we wanted to be in this house in this community.  The sales reps were now selling homes with delivery dates in May 2015, which lined up with our timeline to buy.  We didn't want to risk another price increase, so we put down a $1000 homesite reservation fee.  This gave us a few more days to think about it without risking the price increasing again.  

We went back on 10/23/14 with our realtor to sign our purchase agreement.  Signing the purchase agreement paperwork took about 3 hours.  We got our $1000 homesite reservation fee back and paid $5000 as an initial deposit.  We also got a list of companies that we would be working with to finalize all of our options.  We had to meet with the vendors within 30 days to make our selections even though our house wasn't going to be ready until May 2015.  In our area, Guardian handled security, phone, internet, and in-home sound systems, and TAC handled carpet, tile, and flooring selections.

We were so excited to be getting our first home!

The laundry room in the model.  It's located on the same floor as the bedrooms.

The kitchen at the model.  We ended up selecting these cabinets.

The main floor of the model

The master bedroom

Introduction and our first visit to Greenbelt Station

Since I couldn't find many blogs out there about building Ryan Homes's Strauss model when my husband and I were trying to make a decision on whether to buy, I wanted to start this blog to document my experience.  We are already in the process of building a Ryan Homes Strauss Townhome. Our home will be in the Greenbelt Station community in Maryland.

When we first discussed buying a home, we researched what was on the market in the greater DC area for about a year.  We knew we wanted to be close to metro if possible, since traffic in this area is terrible, and we only have one car.  We decided that we would aim to close on a house in May/June 2015, and thought we would end up with a fixer-upper not very close to metro.  Then one of our online searches showed Greenbelt Station, and we thought that it must be too good to be true.  We are familiar with the Greenbelt area since we both went to University of Maryland.  We knew the area wasn't perfect, but it has a lot of potential with talks of the new FBI headquarters being in the area and the new Hyattsville Arts District just down the road.  We decided to get a realtor and schedule a tour of the model home.  (With Ryan Homes you have to have your realtor with you on your first visit to the model home or Ryan Homes will not pay the realtor's commission.)

We made our first trip to the model on September 28, 2014.  At the time, the community had hardly any homes built.  The sales reps working in the model home were very friendly and not too high pressure.  My husband fell in love with the home immediately.  I really liked the home, but wanted more time to crunch the numbers and see what else was out there.  After we left the house, we set up more home tours with our realtor to see more new construction since we were now sold on the idea of a new construction townhome.  We saw homes by Lennar and Beazer as well as another Ryan Homes community.  Nothing else compared, so we set up our appointment to go back to Greenbelt Station.

Strauss Townhomes at Greenbelt Station on our first visit 9/28/2014