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| Picture of our Pug |
My first impression was, wow, this is a pretty big house. I loved the stairs located in the center which made it easy to go up and go down the stairs. The morning room was awesome since it was elevated (walk-out basement) and the house was located on top of a ravine. So it sort of just stood on its own hanging off the house. Another great feature, it had a small office tucked away with access from the family room. Perfect for working from home. The home is also energy star rated so will definitely help with the utility rooms. The only drawback to that was not being able to get a wood fireplace and having a fan in one of the bathrooms turning on automatically because the home was so tightly sealed. The fan didn't make a lot of noise so it was no big deal.
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| Picture of morning room and kitchen in the Rome model |
After touring the house now it was time for business. One of the sales reps was able to break away and help me price a Pisa Torre even though I was a day early from the grand opening. I was also able to get the $20,000 in upgrades and pick my lot early, imagine that? So we got down to business and started pricing it. Unfortunately, I was unable to tour a model because they had just closed on one the day before we got there. It was OK because I had seen plenty of pictures. Now it was time to see how I could get this home to fit our family of seven.
Since we only had three bedrooms we added every bedroom option. In fact we ended up adding almost every option available to have some separate living areas in the attic and basement for those ever so exciting teen years. We'd eventually have four teens living in our home at the same time so we were planning ahead of time. Before it was all said and done, we went from the base price of $308,000 to a price of $478,000! Say what? How is that even possible. That was with the $20,000 incentive. We ended up with $170,000 in options just so we could fit our family and live in a one story house. Well, fortunately, the sales manager was on site which is rare from what I was told and was able t discount the house another $20,000.
Wow, what a deal, $40,000 off the price of the house, double the incentive for the weekend! This is the point I really should have thought about it. I was a day early, first time in the area, and missing my realtor. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. But signing enabled me to check one more thing off my list out of the many things we still had left to do. I mean, we were living in a hotel at that point so had to do something. Reflecting back on this decision, it was almost the same as going to a new car dealership in a taxi.
Anyway, we signed and the sales rep insisted we could work on the price a little throughout the process so I put a great deal of faith in her (mistake #2). The other odd thing was as part of the requirement, we had to apply through their mortgage company. I didn't feel threatened by this because I was not obligated to finance through them and the extra inquiry wouldn't affect my credit score because I had already pre qualified before I came and it was within 30 days of that inquiry. Also it makes a lot of sense for two reasons, the builder will have more confidence that the deal will go all the way through completion and also the closing is guaranteed to be on time since they both fall under the same company. That actually adds a convenience factor because most lenders won't do a full application until way later and they are famous for delaying closing.
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