Mid Construction and Pre-Drywall appointment

Friday, May 2nd was our mid-construction appointment. This is also known as pre-drywall appointment.
It was about an hour long, and seemed much quicker than I expected.
We were pretty prepared with questions as we have been hanging out at the new house while our current house is being shown. We have had 10 showings in 5 days but no official bites yet, but lots of interest so hopefully our current house will be off the market soon.
Our appointment was at 9am.  We were at the house the night before due to a showing at our current home. The place was a disaster, and someone obviously got hurt pretty bad as there was blood all over the floor in the living room.  By the time we got there the next morning at 9 for our appointment, everything was cleaned up. I understand it is a construction site, and did not expect them to have scrubbed the blood off the floor, sweep, and get rid of all the debris that was hanging out.  I hope that person is ok, and of course we couldn't ask where all the blood had gone as Ryan doesn't really want you at the home site until closing for safety reasons (unless you have a prior appointment which can be made with the project manager at any time during the day.....but we work).
This appointment the framing, electric, plumbing, HVAC, windows installed, fireplace installed, and a quarter of the siding has been completed. 
Garrett our project manager has been great. If I wasn't impressed with his service, I am now after the discussion about the house during the meeting.
So a little rant, I don't remember if I vented about where the water drain was placed in our basement. It is right in the middle of the portion of the finished basement. You will see this in one of the pictures.  I was mad about it as we had already lost a finished portion when the electric came in at the wrong side of the house and we had a closet built for that box. It pushed our bathroom out so it just keeps eating away at the finished portion of the basement that we paid a lot of money for. In speaking with Garrett, he pushed one wall in the storage area back 4 feet and moved some of our cable jacks/electric jacks to another wall at no charge. He understood the multiple items that were taking away our finished space. This was great to hear! I didn't expect it and was impressed he would do that for us.
The place on Friday was a true construction site.  There were so many contractors there, and so much going on when Garrett walked us through. We had drywall literally hanging off a crane when we were walking in. It was being moved up to a second story window.  Garrett also gave us our solid closing date June 10-12th. It will be our 8th wedding anniversary on June 10th so we are hoping to close then as that would be a special anniversary event.
So, part of the siding was done on Friday, and some drywall. I wanted to get out of the house so I took my son up to the house today (Sunday), and all the siding has been completed and all the drywall has been hung in the house. In addition, our front step has been poured.  It is just amazing how quickly they can accomplish these tasks.

Our siding is Spanish Olive with slate gray shutters. Eventually our front door will be painted Rookwood Green.

As always, here are some pics. Gmail seems to be having an issue, so I will add more when that starts working again.

Framing...from start to finish in 3 days

So, framing started!! This is truly an exciting time. We have seen our house go from just a plot of land, to a basement, to an actual house. Because it is our house, we think it is gorgeous!! I can't believe the framing can be done so quickly, and we still have two month until the house is completely finished and we close on our new mortgage.

We signed the paperwork the last week in January 2014, and our house started getting framed Easter weekend, April 18th. Monday, April 21st, the entire house had been framed. Doors, Windows, and everything installed. It just amazes me how quick this part happened. It is surreal to see our future home standing there.

Although, I can honestly say the contractors probably think that my husband and I are stalking them. Up until this point, we were doing occasional drive-bys maybe twice a week. Since last week when we were told framing would start, we both drive up separately twice a day! Once on our lunch breaks each, and then we go up after work to check things out. 

I attend grad school so was not able to go up last night. I am super excited to go check things out tonight since they have had another full day of working on things. Our next step is our pre-drywall appointment. This is where we can take pictures to know where posts are, know where electrical wires are, and get a base idea of what the inside of our house will look like for future home improvements.

Ok, here are more pictures. Sorry to those annoyed by a million pics. I found the pictures to be the most helpful when I was researching the Ryan Homes Florence Model so thought I would keep up with the pics.

Some progress...but still just waiting

So, it's been a couple weeks, but we are still waiting. Our project manager is great and will give us a call on a weekly basis letting us know what is happening in very general terms so we have no idea what is happening exactly when. This week, the walls to our basement were poured, as well as the floors. Other than that, nothing from NVR, nothing from our realtor selling our house, and nothing from our sales reps at Ryan homes. It is really just a waiting game. We would have no idea that anything was going on if we weren't driving by there every day. Here are some pics of the recent progress.  Ignore the order, the phone didn't upload them in the right order.  Any way, the may start framing tomorrow, so the excitement begins!

A hole in the ground....

So, we now have a hole in the ground. It has been kind of slow lately. We met with the project manager, and he said the would start on the lot. They did. We have a hole in the ground!!!

The contractors poured the footers and it has been that way for a week. No walls have been set up for pouring the basement walls. We just have to be patient.  Across the street someone is also building a Florence. Their house is going up much quicker than ours. At least it is fun to watch theirs go up too when we go to ours and nothing is happening. For example, today was freezing cold and rainy. I didn't expect anyone to be working. I decided to drive to our lot anyway just to see if anything had been done when it wasn't freezing cold and rainy. Well....the two other house that are being built both had workers out there working away (not that I really want people to be out in the cold and rain). Our lot, nothing. 

Ok, rant over. My patience has returned. Our house will happen when it happens :)

Here is a pic of our hole in the ground. Just wish it was always this sunny! A new neighbor of ours took this pic when she was up toward our house walking her dog, and sent this to us. Its looking like a great community already.

Lot has been staked!!

We have our preconstruction meeting on Monday the 24th at 3pm. The project manager Gabrielle wanted to break ground next week, he said. My husband and I decided to take a drive by the new lot tonight, and were very surprised!

Our lot has been excavated, staked, some stone placed for where the driveway will be, and we got a sign of the Florence.  Here are some pics.

I have to apologize for not posting for awhile. We have been waiting for the next step. We were approved with NVR weeks ago. We are focused on selling our current house. Unfortunately, we didn't have the luck as some people who sell their houses in a couple days. We listed at what our relator recommended, which we feel may be a little high. We have also had extreme cold weather in February and March, on top of 3 snow storms. So, hoping it sells soon. We have had several people walk through and make appointments to check it out.  Unfortunately, we have a small kitchen...thus why we are moving.

Anyone looking for more pics of the Florence should definitely Google Ryan Homes Florence Blog....many blogs come up with pics. Love it. Other blogs out there have given me so many ideas.

Here are some pics of our lot progress.  Yes, no other houses around us right now. Two are being built about 5 or 6 houses away

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are some pics from a couple weeks ago.

 

Lot pictures!! Thought I would post a few as we signed officially everything on January 26, 2014. There is going to be a lot of weather changes between signing for the purchase, and for the closing.
I can't believe this piece of land will one day have our house on it!

NVR Mortgage process

Today my husband and I received official approval from NVR mortgage. Yay!!!
I was a little nervous going through NVR due to some horror stories I read on other blogs.
We worked with Nick as our mortgage rep, and Jenna as our processor.

****Both Jenna and Nick are great people to work with. I am happy with everything to date. They know their stuff, and can be helpful****

I thought I would talk about the process with NVR.  M (my husband) and I signed on January 26th for the Ryan home. Granted, at signing we were told we would officially have to apply with NVR within 7 days of signing with Ryan homes, but it really wasn't realistic. We had to wait for our rep to call as instructed by our sales rep. He called on Tuesday. I was off on Monday, and had to work the rest of the week. I work for a credit union and work from 8-6 typically, and 8-7 on Fridays. I also work Saturdays but NVR is not open on Saturday.

Here comes my issue. Nick insisted we had to apply before Sunday the 2nd to keep within requirements. NVR's hours...9-5 Monday through Friday. Knowing I will probably have to take time off at some point for all of these appointments involved with building a house, I just could not take time off that week. With little notice, and NVR's office being about 45 minutes away from where I work, I couldn't just up and leave work to go apply for a mortgage. Anyone that knows the banking world knows the end of the month and beginning of the month is a very busy time. The credit union I work for does not offer building home mortgages or I would have used them for convenience.  We were not told the office hours of Nick until after we signed with our sales rep.

Nick gave me a little bit of a hard time about not being able to meet with him that week.  I don't understand why their hours or so inflexible. Our mortgage reps meet outside hours at our client's convenience. Anyway, Nick and I compromised to do a telephone application which was not mentioned until I dug my heels in and said I could not meet with him in person by Friday.  We scheduled a phone application that Friday on my lunch break. We then scheduled a follow up appointment to meet that following Monday the 3rd.

The timing still isn't bad. We met Nick officially on Monday the 3rd to apply, and today being the 19th when we received approval....16 days for approval for a mortgage is not bad at all.

Throughout this process, I have been a little irritated about some of the things NVR has done. 
One example is  when we applied Ryan never informed of us how the interest rate level was determined through NVR. So all of you know, NVR uses the second lowest score. Our second lowest score was a 725. Not a horrible score, but does  not qualify us for the best rates out there.  The financial institution my husband works for and the company I work for would use the highest score out there. Not the second lowest. Nick mentioned this is the way they have been doing business for years. Well...it is definitely not customer oriented. They will use the score to their best advantage. Although our other scores were 753, 765, 779, 796, NVR would not consider those scores.

Also, NVR used a third party company called CORE LOGIC to call me and then conference in Fed Loan servicing which is my student loan company. As I am currently pursuing my MBA my payments are deferred. Core logic called me. She was a lady with a heavy accent.  I could understand what she was asking, but I cannot say the same for the lady at Fed Servicing. This was actually pretty comical. The core logic lady with the accent was probably based overseas, she was not listening at all to the fed loan servicing lady...the fed servicing lady was getting such an attitude with answering core logic. She would answer a question, and core logic would ask her the same question. Fed loan would say "I just gave the answer...what more do you want from me". "I asked you when the first loan payment for student loan repayment is due" "I just gave you that answer three times". OMG! Is all I can say. I did find humor in this situation, although I can say neither party was being professional at all. So hopefully if you are applying for a mortgage, your student loans are not in deferment mode.

Another example, Jenna would call us and say "I need this item or a copy of this by the end of the day, so I can submit to underwriting asap". A week later, I would get another call from Jenna saying that the file still had not been submitted to underwriting. We received a few of these calls.  One time was Jenna wanted M and I to sign a letter stating that our current house was listed for sale, but we understand that if we do not sell our current house, we are responsible for both the current mortgage and NVR's mortgage. My husband who works by appointment managing investments, arranged his schedule so he could come to the credit union and sign this letter since Jenna needed it by the end of the day so Jenna could submit to underwriting. A week later, I get another call from Jenna saying she needed our employer plan summaries for both our 401(k)'s. At application they needed our 401k statements and now she was saying she needed this by the end of the day asap so she could submit to underwriting as she knew the underwriter would ask for this (well, why weren't we told this two weeks ago and we would have submitted it with everything). Both times she talked as if the file had yet to make it to an underwriter.

Alas....we received great news today that we are approved. Nick called to tell me the great news. Although he mentioned Jenna would be calling me with the commitment letter and conditions going forward. Items such as bank statements from now until closing will be needed.

So that is the long version.  We are approved and looking forward to closing in a few months. Our house was officially ordered (the materials) this past Sunday. Can't wait! Now on to focusing on getting this house sold!