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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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. The good news is today the mortgage rate has dropped and NVR mortgage rate has gone down from 4.375% to 4.125% for our particular loan (- 25 bps). We looked at the survey of mortgage experts on Bankrate and the result was that 58% of the experts thought the rate would go lower during the upcoming week while the remaining 42% thought the rate would stay the same. However, we had only an hour to decide whether to lock the rate or not so we didn't really have time to study the expected direction of mortgage rate further (both my husband and I were at work). We thought this rate was already pretty good plus the current uncertainty related to political matters so we just decided to just lock the rate. We definitely don't want to risk the rate going back up again.
It finally came, the time for us and the PM to sit down and go through all of the options we'd made as well as any questions we had. Unfortunately, none of our requests to make changes during the construction was accepted. Below are the answers we got during the meeting. There are some questions we didn't ask since they are either not important or already mentioned as he went through our options.
Exterior/Outdoors
Structural
Interior
HVAC
Electrical Matters
Schedule
Other
So it has finally come - the pre-construction meeting! Although we don't know the exact date yet, the SR said she would call us in a few days to set up the appointment with the PR. We are just waiting for all of the docs regarding our options to get in Ryan Homes system. Our last day to make changes is March 5 but the guy from Guardian is taking a long time to send the needed docs to Ryan Homes. In the mean time, we have been gathering all questions we want to ask before the actual meeting. Below is our question list:
Exterior/Outdoors
Structural
Interior
HVAC
Electrical Matters
Schedule
Other
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