I just received the call today that we had been approved for the house and once our deposits have been submitted we will continue the process. The next step will be the Pre-Construction meeting after the last deposit, but since we are asking for a late November closing, we are not looking to start to break ground and begin construction until late July/early August. I have to say that I was a little nervous during this time of waiting as we had not heard anything from NVR about our loan, but really during this time it sounds like it is probably best to not hear anything. Now we just have a long time waiting, Ugh every day we get closer I get more and more excited for us to move. We have both really embraced the area and even the drive, and have started to make our way out there on multiple occasions (for those of you that are not in Virginia, this area has Festivals every weekend for any occasion, it is actually pretty awesome).
Now we play the waiting game! That and watch the development of this community, today I looked at the site and in 2 months time they have already sold 34 homes. Amazing!
Today we met with Hanna to go over options for the house. Once again she was very straightforward and simplified the entire process for us. During this time we selected the following;
House Colors (Wedgewood Siding; Savannah Gray Brick; White Trim/Gutters/Garage; Quixotic Plum Door)
Cabinets/Countertops/Floors
Sonoma Painted Linen Cabinets (Kitchen/Bathroom); Luna Pearl Countertop (Kitchen);
*Never have we thought about laminate, but I know this is something that more people are starting to do and will hopefully hold up better with our dog vs. the engineered hardwood
Carpet Baseline White Fox w/ Upgrade Pad
*Carpet is in Living Room and all upstairs. We will take out carpet upon closing and replace with the laminate flooring throughout
We found out today that we will complete the selections to our house on Monday, April 17th, but today we will be speaking to NVR about the approval of our house while going over our credit reports and other financial information. I have to admit, this is the part of the process that worries me the most, not because I don't think we will come up with the money but moreso because we do not have very much saved up for a down payment and both of us are coming in with limited assets and a large amount of student loan debt. I have been hesitant to even mention that we are progressing into purchasing a home in the chance that we are not approved.
Once again, I have no idea where NVR and Ryan Homes find the people to assist the homebuyer but to be honest I have nothing but great things to say so far. William, eased so many of our concerns going into this process and let us know that with our financial information, he does not forsee any issues for us to get approved. We will need to continue to work on the DTI ratio of our credit cards but our credit reports came back even greater than I thought they would be. With the assistance of my wife, I do have to say that we came into this meeting extremely prepared, making copies of everything they needed, forwarding information ahead of time, and even providing more documents then requested just to make sure they wouldn't need anything further from us. It was actually an extremely painless meeting and believe it or not calmed me down for the rest of the process, I really felt a sense of relief after we came out of this meeting.
William also discussed all of the costs associated with the mortgage and how we could shop around for other services as needed. One of the only things I think we will shop around for is the homeowners insurance as we use USAA for everything and they have provided tremendous customer service and coverage. One thing that we went over that caught me a little off guard was title insurance. I had never heard of this and didn't realize this was a mandatory cost but didn't seem to expensive for the peace of mind know that your title wa clear and would remain that way or that you would have assistance with any type of claims made against the title.
Overall however we figured we would use NVR mortgage as the rates seemed to be in comparison with other companies and they were offering $5,000 in closing costs, not too mention we wanted to keep most things in house to avoid any potential miscommunication as NVR and Ryan homes reps work hand in hand and help expedite the process. We would be working on approval for an FHA loan, and William certainly provided us all the information needed to make us feel comfortable about moving along in the process and timelines of approximate approval and underwriting. Also we would need to decide on when to lock an interest rate, I figured this was done approximately 60 days before closing but apparently they also have options to do this up to 120 days prior for a premium. Although we will likely wait until the 60 day period, it was a good idea to find a couple of days to monitor the rates. One more thing checked off the list to owning our home.
Once again, we are new to this whole process, so there are a number of things that we were unclear on, but once again Brad did a fantastic job helping walk us through the entire process. God bless him, because I know he has had to be patient and we are going to have 1000 questions
Questions
1.) What are the specific times/markers in which we would need to make payments and be approved for financing/ how much at each time period? i.e. date of initial contract deposit (How Much?), 2nd Deposit (When/How Much?), 3rd Installment (When/How Much?), when do we need to have the rest of the down payment and apply for financing?
The deposits will completely depend on you and what type of loan you're doing. Typically we require a minimum of $1500 at contract. From there you would have a payment at 30 days and a final one at 60 days. For example, if you are doing an FHA loan and putting 3.5% down then we would do $1500 at contract, $1500 at the 30 day mark, and $2,000 at the 60 day mark. That would bring us to a total of $5,000 and that would go directly towards your cash to close at the end. This means if your cash to close is $10,000, you're only bringing $5,000.
2.) Do you have a copy of the site map to review plots in which we could select from?
3.) Also we want to know if we can build a fence into the mortgage?
You can definitely build a fence in this community but it does have to be done after closing. Our warranties are incredible with our homes and basically protect you from having to spend any money to fix issues. That being said, we don't have the ability to give a warranty on fences and rather than lowering our standards when it comes to this, we don't offer them.
4.) Since we are not going to do the basement would the deck that we have selected have stairs to the back yard? Also, instead of a regular deck can we do a covered deck and how much would that be?
The deck you would have without a basement would definitely have stairs going to your yard however we do not offer a covered porch. A popular option has been retractable awnings that you would purchase after closing.
Brad also included the information for the prequalification in which we provided some base financial information and authorized to run our credit score to make sure that we were in good enough shape to move ahead in the process.
After hearing back from Brad the next day that our pre qualification came back without any issues, on April 7th we decided that we were going to go ahead and move ahead in the process. We placed a $1500 deposit down and we selected our Lot which did include a premium as there will never be building behind our house. We met with Brad to put the deposit down and to verify the Purchase agreement and sign a number of forms digitally. At this time he gave us our address. I have to say it was kind of weird to have an address to the house already and made the whole process real.
I have to say the Sales Representative that we talked to, Brad, was outstanding and I was extremely grateful for his help in answering all of our questions, we are newbies and probably had a ton of dumb questions but he answered all of them honestly and really took his time with the process. I have to admit, when we went to visit the model we had no intention of progressing into the selection process, but after speaking to Brad, he assured us that part of what makes buying new construction so appealing to new buyers is that you may be able to set up deposits and do not necessarily need to have the full down payment at the time the process begins. This is something that we did not expect and certainly was a game changer. We were also assured that if we were not approved, our deposit would be returned to us barring us and going out and making some extravagant purchases.
We quickly started into the process, as I stated we knew that we wanted to move on with the Sienna due to the price point and the setup of the house. We liked the living space albeit we would have liked to take away a little space from the laundry room and master bedroom and reallocate to some of the other bedrooms but overall we liked the way this was setup the best while giving us the option to make some additions without going crazy.
Here is what we selected during this process
The Sienna w/ Elevation B is standard in the community with a partial brick veneer so we stayed with that as we liked the look of that. (Below, however with front facing garage)
Initially when we held this meeting, we wanted to go with the SOHO I package as this was the basic flooring/cabinets/countertop options with laminate and we figured we would change this out down the road but we came to our senses and upgraded to something we actually liked and would enjoy for an extended time in the Barrington Package (Below)
For this community, basements are not included, and does not to be a standard option in Virginia like a number of other areas so we were going to initially include a basement but in the end we just couldn't justify spending another 40k for a space that was not absolutely necessary.
We wanted this house to be as bright as possible, so we added all of the windows in the house, including that in the garage as we would like to utilize this space as a home gym area as well as entertaining space.
The house also comes standard with a Grille Pattern Garage with exterior white trim around the house.
Other options we decided to add were the
Morning Room
Exhaust Vent for the kitchen
Attic Storage Space
Elongated Comfort Height Toilets
Under Cabinet Lighting in the Kitchen
Dedicated Circuit in the Garage
4 Ceiling Rough Ins (2 Complimentary in the bedrooms and added 1 in last bedroom and one more in the morning room).
In total we added 10 recessed lights, primarily in the dining room/living room and master bedroom.
Addition of floodlight
faucet fixture in kitchen upgrade
Range gas hook up
1 additional outlet in the garage and one additional outlet in the master bedroom closet as I thought this would be a great closet/changing room for her.
Now that we have completed all of the selections, we needed to go home and think it over some more. Like I said, we had no intention of moving into the buying process but we really like the community and we like that we have the option to make deposits as our down payment process and continue from there.
Today was the day of the model visit, so we made our way out to New Kent. I wasn't too familiar with the area and quickly did realize upon a google search that this would be quite a further commute than the 14 minutes I typically spend to get in to work. Driving out to New Kent, I was happy to see that all the driving was interstate driving so the drive only ended up being about 22 minutes which is still a good distance but I was not ready for my reaction to the area. The area surrounding the new community is so open and surrounded by a Vineyard, Golf Course, and A LOT of open land. It does seem that there has been a lot of construction in the area in a community across the way that is a retirement community, but the area is extremely rural. Have I become so accustomed the the amenities of the city? It is an absolutely beautiful area but I am interested if there will be further construction in the area. I don't think I am in love with the idea of driving 15 minutes just to get to a grocery store but I do have to say it is so peaceful and beautiful.
Upon arriving in the community, this neighborhood seems to have about 70 lots purchased by Ryan Homes and approximately 10-15 homes in the area that have been there for the past few years but overall will be a big project. I have to say one of the reasons that I like this community is that I do think that this may offer an opportunity for us as young adults who have never owned a home to possibly build a little equity while living in such a serene area. Now this area could just as well see no improvement, but with the prospects of having a vineyard and golf course within walking distance this seemed like an area that had great potential to grow while at the same time keeping its charm of a rural neighborhood.
The model was a Brentwood, that appeared to have all the bells and whistles (No surprise there). Upon walking in and going through the model, I absolutely loved it, but my wife and I wanted to have a little separation from our living space and our bedrooms and were looking for a two story home. Obviously the way they stage the houses are absolutely beautiful and done in the most efficient way possible, but upon going over some floor plans prior to our visit we thought the Sienna may offer the most effective space for us and at the same time was the cheapest option available. Well, I guess why not sit down and talk about the process and at least entertain the idea of looking into a new house. Well Here We Go!
**Granite and cabinets are same design we selected for our house
Hello All, thank you to those of you that have posted of this process before and I hope that this can serve as a helpful tool to those continuing to go through the process as it has helped me. It's funny, I get so wrapped up looking through so many of these different builds. Sorry if things don't translate over well, as this is my first time.
Well to give a little background, my wife and I moved to Richmond, Virginia approximately 3 years ago and have greatly enjoyed our time here. We are currently living in the West End of Richmond, Virginia in a very convenient area but I have to say that I have pushed my wife a little to look into the housing process more and more each year, I just have never liked the idea of paying rent and would like to start paying and building into our future.
We were shocked when we arrived in Virginia after moving from Birmingham, AL (One of the cheapest housing markets) to find out what the prices were for considering to move into a home. So over the past couple of years I have been looking into the housing process and what we would need to do to continue to make progression into purchasing our first house. We had not really saved up very much money for a down payment at this point so we had not looked very seriously into the idea of contacting a realtor or starting the process.
Upon a housing search on Zillow over the past few years, I had always known that we would likely need to move either outside the city for the prospect of better schools (Future Children?), more property, less crime, and obviously for us this would be the cheaper option. Or we could continue to look in the area we were currently living in, in which we enjoyed so many amenities and would likely need to spend more money on a property that would need to be a project for us to continue to work on.
I had focused my previous searches on the Hanover County area because I thought this is where we could get the most bang for our buck, that is until another night on Zillow I looked at a new community that had just started taking reservations in New Kent, called the Arbors at New Kent. I really did not know much about this area but the prospect of purchasing a house for just over 200k (Currently offering pre-construction pricing) in the Richmond area was really intriguing. Side note, I am also originally from Nebraska, so selfishly upon doing a quick background search this would be out in a quiet area with the prospect of more property and in between Richmond and Williamsburg while also being that much closer to the beach (Not too many of those in Nebraska).
I contacted the Ryan Homes website related to the Arbors community to try and get a little information while also looking to set up a visit at the model home to try and speak to a sales representative regarding some of the questions while taking a look at the community. We were all set to meet with the SR on April 2nd. We actually thought of this as just some preliminary research of Ryan Homes as we really did not have any savings at this point and thought that there would be no way of being approved for any type of housing financing.
The house also comes standard with a Grille Pattern Garage with exterior white trim around the house.
