I've kept you in suspense for long enough, I suppose! So here's another long post!
When I last left you we'd just signed a contract with Ivory Homes and had a week left to tie up any loose ends before we were committed to building. Seeing as this was the very beginning of our house hunt, that meant we had to get absolutely everything done in one week. Here's what we wanted to accomplish:
- Walk through two finished Ivory models to see which one we liked better.
- See as many existing homes as we could.
- Talk to other builders to see if they could give us a better deal.
- Talk to Ivory's preferred lender and get pre-approved for a mortgage with them, just in case we did end up building with Ivory.
Oh, and in the midst of all this, I told our landlord that we'd be moving. So on top of looking at houses, I had to get our house ready for showings and keep it clean. Talk about stressful, especially with a rambunctious one year old!
We signed the contract with Ivory on Tuesday. Ivory had a finished model of one of the floor plans we liked, a rambler style, in Stansbury Park (out by Tooele). That's quite a way to drive, but we wanted to be sure we liked the floor plan before committing. The other floor plan we wanted to see, a two-story, was in Pleasant Grove, so it wasn't too far away.
We decided to have Blue take some time off work on Wednesday so we could see the houses. On the same day, we were supposed to meet with Ivory's lender. We thought we could time it right and make it work. So I dropped Little Brown off at his Deedee's house (that's my mom) and picked up Blue. Despite our best intentions, and partially due to a really slow drive-through at In-N-Out, we realized we wouldn't make it back from Stansbury Park in time to meet with the lender. Coincidentally, the lender needed to cancel the meeting anyway, so we rescheduled for Saturday. Despite our GPS not being able to find the address (such is life in new developments), we were able to find the rambler model. We walked through it and liked what we saw. Unfortunately, I didn't think to bring a camera, so we didn't get any pictures or video.
We drove back from Stansbury Park to Pleasant Grove and walked through the two-story home. Although the bedrooms were bigger and there was more finished square footage, the overall size of the home was smaller than the rambler, and we didn't like how the layout made the home feel more like a townhouse than a family home. So even though this was the less expensive model, we crossed it off our list.
Thursday was full of cleaning, cleaning, and more cleaning to get our house ready for showings that evening. Thankfully I was able to get it looking really nice. During the showings, we were able to walk through four existing houses with our agent, all in the same neighborhood. We were hoping we'd love one of these so that we didn't have to go through the building process. One was a rambler-style rental, and although it was a nice, spacious home, the lot was tiny, the yard was weeds, and there was a lot of interior maintenance and cleaning that needed to be done to make the house somewhere I'd be comfortable living. Fortunately the price did reflect that. Two other houses we walked through had floor plans we didn't like and/or way too much renovation for our tastes. The last house, a two-story, was really nice and had lots of bedrooms and some high-end finishes. It was in really good shape, but it was also near the top end of our budget.
Instead of gaining clarity, we went home more confused than before. There were pros and cons to every house. We started crunching numbers to figure out what our mortgage payment would be for each home. Due to closing cost incentives with Ivory, maintenance in the rental, and the price point of the two-story, all three ended up having similar mortgage payments. So that didn't help.
Friday, Blue went to a campout with the scouts, and I was left to fret. Overwhelmed but afraid I was going to miss a good deal, I decided to talk to two other builders on Saturday building in the same area as where we were contemplating building with Ivory. Our agent set things up, and I was all set to go alone, since I figured Blue wouldn't be back from his campout in time.
Thankfully he was able to get back, so Saturday we set off together to talk to Salisbury Homes and Edge Homes. The people at Salisbury were nice, but the homes were at the top end of our budget, the lots were small, and they didn't have many incentives. We walked through a couple of models but weren't overly impressed.
Then we went to talk to Edge. Edge had one lot left at their old pricing plan, which was well within our budget. (The new price list was out of our budget.) Their homes had a lot of standard features that were upgrades for Ivory Homes. And the floor plan we liked was about 300 square feet larger than the Ivory home we were thinking about. I was really optimistic that this would be the one, so on the spot we signed a contract to lock in the lot and the old pricing, again with a week to make a final decision.
We looked at where the lot would be, and we could see why it was the last to sell. It was up against a highway and railroad line with a big power transformer visible from the backyard. It had a north-facing driveway (and in Utah, that means the snow won't melt!). The lot was also 2,000 square feet smaller than the one we'd picked with Ivory. Our agent also set up a showing at a nearby Edge house that was a few years old, so we saw that as well. Again, it was nice, but it was out of our price range and still not in our favorite location. We also walked through a drywalled version of the Edge floor plan we liked, but it's so hard to visualize a house when there's nothing but drywall.
We were also on a time crunch, as we were meeting with Ivory's lender in Lehi that day as well. So we hopped in the car and drove up to get pre-approved. That was fairly painless, but I knew that their interest rates wouldn't be as good as the ones we'd been quoted at the credit union. (Not that it's much good to talk about interest rates then, since we couldn't lock in the rate until 60 days before closing, which would be in ~4 months. There's just no way to predict what will happen with them during that time.) After that, we decided to walk through a completed Edge home model, so we drove to the other side of Lehi to look at it. We did like it, though it was hard to tell what upgrades they'd done to the house.
So we went home to think about it again. Should we go for the Ivory home? The location was by far the best, within walking distance of an elementary and high school (and possibly a future junior high). They also had the best incentives with closing costs and yard costs, meaning we'd have more cash to put down and less to spend on putting in a yard. But it was also the smallest and most expensive home we were considering. What about the Edge home we really liked? It was less expensive, had more square footage, and had fancier standard interior features. However, the location wasn't very good, it was a smaller lot, and the builders didn't offer many incentives at all, meaning we'd have to pay closing costs and put in the yard without help from the builder. How to choose when both options are good but not perfect?
And that's where I'll leave you this time. How's that for a cliffhanger? *Evil laughter.* I'll try to get the next post, The Great House Hunt, Part 3: The Decision, up in the next couple of days!
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