We finally closed and got the keys this past Friday!!! I still remember a day around 6 months ago when we went to Ryan Homes just to get some info about the models, the joy of picking our own colors and designs, and the excitement that had built up every time we went to check on the building process and saw how it went from dirt to a home. Time flies so fast. We went to the house after closing, took a deep breath and spent quite a bit of time in there to absorb the fact that this beautiful house is finally ours. After 5 years of living in an apartment, we will finally have a place that truly feels like "home", our first home together!
Now, I'm going to talk about the bad part of the closing day. This is all about how bad NVR service was. If you don't want to read the long story, our lessons learned (the hard way) from dealing with NVR Mortgage are the followings:
The statement "you get what you paid for" is definitely applicable to NVR Mortgage. They give you $10,00 - $15,000 closing-cost help but they don't provide you the service you should get. Although if we had to choose again we would still go with them because we needed this help, my advice is if $10,00 - $15,000 is not that important to you, you should go for a better lender. I wish we were more aware of NVR's poor service so that at least we would know what we got ourselves into.
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It is only 5 days away from closing and I can't wait to decorate our own space! I know it will take a while before the empty house actually feels like "home", but I'm already in the "decor mode" so I'm putting together a plan for furniture and decor. Below is my plan for the main floor.
Inspection:
I probably didn't mention before that we've been using inspection services from Pro-Spex and we highly recommend them if you need independent inspection services in the DC, MD, VA areas. They did an excellent job analyzing every detail of the construction as well as explaining things to us during the inspection. We purchased the new-construction package which includes 3 inspections (foundation, pre-drywall, and pre-walk-thru) and will use their service again for the 1-year inspection before the warranty on the home expires. In this final inspection, we found many things that need to be fixed and spots that need to be re-painted and marked them with blue tape (painter tape). Most of them are minor due to sloppiness but there are a few major mistakes but still fixable. I won't go to the details since it is expected no matter what builder you buy houses from. Just remember to pay close attention to the property before you get the house and during the first year. Final walk-thru: The PM first talked about warranty and all information we might need when we move in. Then he walked us around the house to explain how all of the systems work (the heater/cooler, the fire place, gas range, etc ...). We found 2 spots in the basement that were leaking from underneath the powder room which is a major problem. It has been scheduled to be fixed before we close and we will have a re-walk-thru on the closing day. These was a leak at the same area before during the construction but they fixed it. It has made us very worried finding issues like this even before we close, although they usually happen because Ryan Homes hire different contractors with different level of workmanship quality. It is almost like having a smooth process without issues while building a home depending on your luck! The good thing is that they offer 2-year warranty which covers all of the problem caused by poor workmanship. We also added some more blue tape on spots we missed during the home inspection. *Update on the leak (7/14/2017): It turned out the the leaks were from a loose connection of the water pipe to the fridge so it wasn't a big problem. I wish we had a lot of cash on hand to load up the place with furniture and decorations, but we don't so here are some photos of our completed empty house which will stay empty for a while. Construction Week 14: Fine Tuning Done, House Cleaned, County Inspection, and Quality Inspection.7/8/2017 This is just a quick update that the house is pretty much completed after 14 weeks of construction (on time as scheduled).
We went to the house yesterday (Friday) and were disappointed seeing that it was not cleaned. It was not until 6PM when we left that the cleaning crew finally came. During our visit we were trying to measure all 28 windows and 2 patio doors (I know, that's a lot) to order window treatments so I didn't have enough time to take photos for this post. I'll be back next week to talk about our final walk-thru. Today when we came in they were still working on tuning loose ends so they would probably get the house cleaned on Wednesday. The rest of the week would be for county inspections and quality inspections. Next week our independent inspector will come in on Tuesday the 11th and the final walk-thru is scheduled for Thursday the 13th. They probably need another week to work on whatever found during the home inspection and final walk-thru so they scheduled for deal to close on Friday the 21st. Below are the photos of some details inside the house. I hope to get either photos or a video of the whole house later during our final walk-thru. |