Progress so far

We had our pre-construction meeting on March 8th.  By this point our lot had been surveyed and staked and all the lumber had been ordered.  We went over the plans with our construction manager and checked out the lot.

Here is our lot before construction!

Construction started on March 21st.  We drove by to see the progress on the 23rd. Here is what it looked like!

NVR Mortgage

The Mortgage process started out a little rocky, but ended up working out.  We are using a VA loan, so we are financing 100% of the cost of the house and we rolled in some of the closing costs.  My husband is currently going to school and getting the G.I. Bill, which is great!!... but we can not count that as income.  So we had to apply for the mortgage solely on my income.  (This was part of the reason we chose not to upgrade some of the basic features of the house like flooring and crown molding that could be easily upgraded later).

We met with NVR mortgage, signed some papers, and handed over documents like our tax returns, paystubs, etc.  I was a little nervous since we were basing the loan only off of my income, but we were approved within a week!!  Of course we have some stipulations... we are not using a credit cards so they do not show up when our credit is pulled before closing. I also had to pay off one of my student loans that only had a $400 balance.

Even better news is that I got a job offer a few weeks later, working in the same industry and making a little more money!  So I felt a little better about having a cushion in case the mortgage rates went up.

About a month after we were approved, we decided to do a 120 day rate lock at 3.5%! :)

Upgrades and options

We decided to go with the Florence, Elevation A, with a partial stone front.  Here are some of the options we chose:

• Gas Fireplace
• Upgraded owner's bath with soaking tub
• Tahoe Cherry Bordeaux kitchen cabinets
• Kitchen Island
• Morning Room (included if we finance through NVR)
• Recess lighting in the kitchen
• 2 ceiling fan rough ins
• 1 light americana
• Attic Storage
• Stainless steel appliances
• Tubing above mantel to side of fireplace so TV cords to not hang over the fireplace
• Security system rough in

Here are our flooring and cabinet selections. The dark cabinets are for the kitchen, and the lighter cabinets are for the bathrooms.  The wood entranceway came with the house, and we chose the cherry color.  We have the basic vinyl and carpet throughout the rest of the house... we figure we can easily upgrade that later and not worry about rolling it into our mortgage

Kitchen Cabinet and Counters

Here are our exterior options. We have light blue siding and dark red shutters and door

Introduction

Hello!  We have decided to build a Florence with FoxRidge Homes (Ryan Homes).  Here is how the process began.

• My husband and I saw a listing for a house built buy Fox Ridge Homes online when we were browsing for houses.  We went to the FoxRidge website and liked what we saw, so we decided to visit a community in an area we liked nearby
• On our first visit, we toured the model home, which happened to be a Florence.  After hearing there were only two lots left, we decided that we liked the area and the homes and wanted to go ahead with building our own
• We set up another meeting with the Sales Rep and made an initial selection of the floor plan and upgrades we wanted

We decided to go with elevation A