Lot 130

I emailed Nadia about coming in to put a deposit down on Lot 45 - the corner lot - later that day as I already had plans to walk through the model with my mom that afternoon.  She got back to me later telling me that someone had put a deposit down the night prior :( I still walked my mom through the house and she loved it, but felt a little discouraged.  We really liked the idea of having a little more space.  I looked again at the lots available, and the one I liked the most (which was the one I originally liked), was lot 130.  It backs up to the woods so the backyard has a lot more privacy than the other lots. The drawback for this lot (and what drew us to the corner), was that it's a premium lot with a $7,500 price tag.  Mike and I talked about it and emailed Nadia to ask what she could do about the price for us.  She came back saying that the project manager would give it to us for $5,000.  We countered back asking that they meet us in the middle at $3,750 which they did :) I sent her a picture of our deposit check which held the lot for 7 days. I can't get the picture of the site plan to work, but here is a link: Lot 130.  There is a house on the other side of us, this only shows a small portion of the community.

The following night we took the kids to walk around the lot.  We ended up meeting a nice younger couple out walking with their kids and their dog.  Declan made friends with the little boy as they threw rocks into some water, Madi layed the ground work for some babysitting, and Mike and I asked them lots of questions :) They were great, and meeting them and seeing how friendly everyone was made us so much more excited to live in that neighborhood.  There are tons of young families so we know it will be wonderful for the kids.

On Mother's Day we had our appointment with Nadia to make everything official and sign our contract, and of course put down more money (woops - I forgot the checkbook).  We went through all of our additional options and found what we think we're happy with :) Once we get through our next couple of appointments I will list all of them - but the main ones are: morning room, fireplace in family room, upgraded owner's bathroom, upgraded kitchen cabinets, and granite counters. Here is a floor plan (ours has the loft):


We left our appointment super excited with our sold sticker and a whole binder full of information.  A few days later we drove over to the lot and let the kids put the sign on.

This is going to be such a fun process!!

Right now we're haggling with the mortgage companies - we're trying to get Ryan's company - NVR Mortgage - to match the quote that Cole Taylor gave us so that we can get this month's promotion - a $5,000 incentive credit.  We'll see how they do! Our flooring appointment is June 1st and electrical appointment is the week after that.

Looking for a House

Mike and I were extremely surprised with how quickly our home sold in Manchester - it was on the market for less than 2 weeks! We had originally anticipated looking for a new home after we moved out but we couldn't wait to start looking. We were both scouring online daily - looking for at least a 3 bedroom home, 2000 square feet or more, with an updated kitchen, and hopefully a couple of acres for Mike to hunt on. We looked at a couple of great houses (and one total dump) but none of them were for us. As we realized we were looking at the same houses every day we both started to broaden our searches and I ended up finding a model home in a community in Canandaigua called Old Brookside.  On Sunday, May 4th we went to take a look.

We met with Nadia, the sales rep, in Farmington and she was fantastic.  We had originally inquired about the Venice model which I liked because it had 4 bedrooms with a nice master suite, an open floor plan on the first floor, and was around 2,200 square feet. The model we were visiting was the Milan and Nadia told us she wasn't sure we would like it as much as the Venice because the living area was a bit more separated. After lots of questions from her we finally got up to look at the house.  And fell in love.  Mike hated himself for how much he liked it.  Of course the model home has all of the upgrades - morning room, granite, upgraded cabinets, fireplace, hard wood floors, etc... but really, even in a basic form this house is beautiful. After walking around for a bit we ended up going back downstairs to discuss options with Nadia. We did find a lot that we liked, it was a corner, so we liked that it was a little bigger than the others that would leave us more space between houses and a slightly larger backyard. We left with a "quote" and lots of thinking to do.  We had to do a bit of running around with the kids and then we drove to Henrietta to see the Venice model located there.  As soon as we walked into the kitchen we both agreed that we like the Milan better.  It's not as open, but we liked that it has an additional bar counter in between the kitchen and family room which will not only be great for entertaining but will provide more seating. The layout for the Milan is below:

And here is the layout for the Venice - you can see it's ALL open:


So, after we saw the Venice we decided to drive back and see the Milan again to ensure that we liked it better, which we definitely did.

There was LOTS of thinking over the next couple of days.  Can we handle living in a cul de sac community? Do we want to build a new house? Would we even qualify for a mortgage right now? Can we come up with the cash upfront that they are asking for? Do we like the lots available? Would we be ok with the new construction happening so close to our house?  Lots of thinking, lots of talking... So much so that I was consumed by it - looking online at blogs during work (shh, don't tell), stressing myself out, getting behind on my work.  I decided on Wednesday to take a personal day to at least get mentally caught up.  I slept in a little (6:00) and got up to exercise, took Declan out to the babysitter, and then we headed to Lyons National Bank to a pre-qualification appointment that I'd made for us. When I arrived Mike was already there, and greeted me telling me that LNB doesn't do FHA loans :( Bummer.  The guy we met with, Joe Arbogast, was great.  He still looked at our numbers and gave us some advise, along with recommending us to Trish Mastrodonato at Cole Taylor in Pittsford.  Mike had to head off to Buffalo for work so I went to Pittsford to meet with Trish.  She was also great, she looked at our numbers, compared them to the quote we'd gotten from Nadia, and gave me a Good Faith Estimate. I felt very positive coming out of our meeting and called Mike to see if he wanted to put down a deposit on our corner lot.  He said yes :)