We received our final approval from NVR!

We have one week to go until closing, and we just got our final approval from NVR.  I knew we would be approved but it's still such relief!  We have our New Home Orientation on Wednesday, and everything should be all set to close on Monday.  This is so exciting!

We Have a Closing Date!

We just received an electronic copy of our settlement letter from NVR!  We will be closing on May 18th.  We're so excited to be so close to getting our new home!

We also received our weekly construction update. It was another busy week! They completed the brick on all of the homes in our row and are starting the siding. They're also working to put the second coat of paint on the walls, ceilings and trim inside our house, and they're installing all the light fixtures inside.  Next week we should get our granite in the kitchen and we might even get electricity!

Here is a picture of our block now:

Construction to begin in the next two weeks

We just got an email from our sales rep that construction will begin on our house in the next two weeks!  We are working with our sales rep to set up our pre-construction meeting with the project manager.  We will likely be meeting with the project manager on the 19th since we are both off work that day.  So far everyone we have worked with through Ryans Homes, NVR, and their subcontractors have been so helpful, and we can't wait to finally meet our project manager.

30 Day Change Request

We met with our Ryan Homes sales rep and completed the 30 day change request for all of our options.  Our meeting only lasted about a half hour and we only had to sign one paper.

Our sales rep is the best!  I feel like we are always bombarding her with questions when we see her, but she's very patient and answers all of questions thoroughly or follows up with the project manager if necessary.

It's fun driving out to the community and seeing all the progress.  They are almost done with the first building of condos and finished another row of townhomes.  They have only sold one more house in our row, so that has slowed down.  However, they have sold a ton of condos in the community.

We're getting very excited to see to start seeing our house under construction in January or February!

TAC Tile & Flooring Meeting

We had our meeting with TAC today to pick our tile and flooring.  This was the meeting we were most looking forward to and also most anxious about since we had no idea what everything would cost.  Since we signed our purchase agreement we have been visiting lots of Ryan Homes models in the area to get ideas for tile and flooring and also for general decorating.  I am so glad we spent the time going to other models because we went into the TAC meeting knowing what we wanted.  The samples at TAC's showroom were the typical sample size, which in my opinion isn't really enough to show you what your home will look like.  

The sales rep at TAC was very helpful and patient when we were trying to make decisions.  She started by pulling out our granite and cabinet selections.  We are getting the Santa Cecilia granite in both the kitchen and master bathroom, and we are getting the Lausanne cabinets in the kitchen and bathrooms.  We wanted a nice sleek, modern look, but we also wanted our choices to be timeless.

After we had the granite and cabinets out, we started by discussing what type of flooring we wanted.  We decided on vinyl in the laundry room (which is standard), 12x12 tiles in the bathrooms, carpet in the bedrooms, and hardwoods everywhere else.  First we selected our hardwood.  We could only get engineered hardwood in the basement since it had to be glue down with the concrete slab.  That worked for us since we had decided we wanted the dark engineered hardwood that was in the model home.

Our flooring selection with the kitchen cabinet sample.

 After we decided on hardwoods, we moved onto picking the carpet for the bedrooms.  We went with a neutral color but not too light.  We also upgraded to the next level up since it is more stain resistant and we have a puppy.  We also picked a basic vinyl for the laundry room.

Our carpet selection with our hardwood and cabinets.

 After we finished up our flooring selections, we moved on to tile.  We started with the master bathroom.  We went with level C tile in the master bathroom.  This gave us a listello, 9x12 wall tile, and 12x12 floor tile.  We selected neutral colors with grays in the stone listello.

Our master bathroom selections with the cabinet and granite samples

Close-up of our master bathroom selections

Next we moved on to the hall bathroom tile. We had seen the basic tiles in a hall bathroom at a model and hated how cheap it looked.  However, We didn't want to upgrade the tile in here too much, so we went with level B tile which keeps the basic white 6x6 tile on the wall but includes a 12x12 floor tile.  We also added a listello, since it was only $65 and will make the bathroom look nicer.  We stayed neutral again with a natural stone and glass listello.

Our hall bathroom selections

Close up of the listello for the hall bathroom

We finished up by adding a tile backsplash for the kitchen.  We chose to mix and match with a neutral off white main tile and a gray stone and glass accent band.  We wanted the off white tile instead of the gray tile that the accent band was shown with in case our granite ends up more yellow in color.  It was $1295 to add the tile backsplash, but we knew we wanted a backsplash and like the option we chose.

Kitchen backsplash option with the small tile accent band instead of the brown/orange color one

Close up of the accent band with the granite

 We walked out of the meeting spending $10,000, but we felt like we got everything we wanted.  This was definitely our favorite meeting.

Guardian Technologies Meeting

We met with Guardian Technologies to make our low voltage wiring selections.  Our Guardian Specialist was not pushy about adding all of the extras.  He did recommend the security system, but he didn't push it.  It was $250 to have the security system installed and $50 per month for a minimum of 3 years for the basic home monitoring package if you got the security system installed.  There were also options to add security cameras.  

After we went through security options, we discussed phone and cable outlets.  Our home came with 2 phone outlets and 2 cable outlets.  Since we don't plan to have a phone in our house we were able to switch one phone outlet for another cable outlet.  We put a cable outlet in the rec room, living room, and master bedroom.  We put the phone jack for our wi-fi in the living room since it's the most central location.  It was an additional $150 for each additional phone or cable outlet.  Since we don't plan to have TV in the two additional bedrooms and we only use wi-fi, we opted not to add any additional outlets.  

There were also options to pre-wire for a wall-mounted TV ($415 per TV), add an intercom ($2845), and add a surround sound system ($1185).  We didn't opt for any of these.

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.