Our Design Choices

We chose the Lausanne Square Maple Espresso Timberlake Cabinets for the Kitchen and the bathrooms, the Luna Pearl granite and the Rural Living Deep Java 5" throughout the main floor.  We told the sales rep at purchase we wanted engineered hardwoods on the main floor. She put them in as laminate and assured us that was the same thing in their system.  BUT when we got to the design center they told us that was incorrect and so we had to pay an additonal $1600 to upgrade to the hardwoods we thought we already had.

 

Bathrooms - Square Maple Espresso, Upgraded laminate flooring and santa cecilia granite.  This granite was just a substitute.  CTI didnt have the actual santa cecilia which is less grey and more marble looking.

 

Our carpet choices for the basement (left) and the 3rd floor (right). Main floor hardwoods in the middle.   We went with the highest upgrade berber  in Frosty Taupe for the basement because we figured we will be spending a lot of time down there.  3rd floor carpet was D level (Favorite Choice Gallery). I really wanted it to be stain resistant or else we could have gone down a level. 

 

Laminate for entrance next to downstairs berber.  Laminate is called Station Square.

 

We are very excited to see how this all comes together. Our Pre-contruction meeting is in August so we still have another month or so before anything happens really but they are starting on our actual street now so soon we will be able to see our lot.  In the meantime I guess we can just wait and pray the interest rates don't keep going up...

Model Home

Here's some pictures of the Model.  Our house will be set up just like this one with a Bay Window on the side of the living room.

Catch Up - Loan Pre Approval

So when we were signing the purchase agreement the sales rep told us that by putting a minimum of  5% down we could avoid mortgage insurance with a conventional 30 year loan. This was a big deal to us because the MI was like $350 a month.    However, a few days later a NVR loan officer contacted me and let me know that if the MI was waived the interest rate would go up from like 3.75% to 4 something.  I was more than a little annoyed by this.  I don't want to assume we were purposely mislead but I did have an uneasy feeling about it.  From that point forward I've had a bad feeling about NVR.  And then when I went online I saw so many bad reviews for NVR, it just confirmed my feelings.  NVR was offering $10K towards closing  but my husband and I decided to go with our bank because we just feel more comfortable working with them. Hopefully it works out for us : )

Catch Up - Purchase Agreeement

I'm a little behind in starting this process.  So far we have signed our purchase agreement, secured our pre-approval and made design decisions.  Our house is scheduled for completion in November.

Little background...my husband and I have been married for a little over 2 years and we have 2 wonderful little children, a boy and a girl.  He is a 2nd lieutenant in the United States Army and I work in contracts.  We currently live in AL but our house is being built in Maryland where we will be moving once he gets out the Army in the fall.

So far the process has been very stressful.  Our sales rep has not been the best.  We felt very rushed through the purchase process. She didnt go over the available options with us and at one point told us she didnt want to waste her time if we weren't going to go through with it (even though we had given her no reason to think we wouldn't). Despite what's been disappointing customer service, my husband and I are moving forward because we believe this will be a good investment for our family.

Some interesting misshaps thus far:  
*My husband and I live in AL. The house will be in MD.  We came up for a 4 day weekend just to purchase this house.  No one was available to sell us the house until the 3rd day.
*Sales Rep got 3/4 of the way through the 100 page purchase agreement before realizing she was selling us the wrong house. There is a larger version of the Mozart with a morning room etc.  She assumed this was the house we wanted, never asked and the paperwork didnt specify until the end when she started showing us specs and they werent right.  When I pointed out that it was the wrong house she got an attitiude with me like it was my fault.