I'm happy to report that our pre-construction meeting has been scheduled for Friday morning! They haven't yet given us a date for ground-breaking, but I'm hopeful that we'll be able to start next week.
Right now I'm a little unhappy with Ryan Homes...when we walked the lot with our SR, I was given to understand that we would have a good-sized back yard. Stupid me, I didn't think to ask for a plat to see how our house is situated. Well, due to the width of the lot and the width of the Rome, they had to make our side-entry driveway more narrow than usual, so they sent us a copy of the plat to sign off on the driveway change...and I was dismayed to see that there is only 17 feet from the back of our morning room to the property line! The back yard is kind of a big deal to me, so I immediately called the SR to discuss. Unfortunately there's not much that can be done due to minimum setbacks and a 20 foot power easement along the road. To their credit we were offered the chance to switch to a different lot, but my husband talked me out of it.
On the plus side, now I have a one time use, "I gave up a big backyard for you!" card in my deck, to use the next time a big decision comes along and I want to win the discussion... :)
This is the same situation we're in (except there are no larger lots available so we're stuck with our tiny 20' back yard). We looked into other developments & other builders, but ultimately we loved the Rome too much to "give it up" & decided to suck it up on the small yard size. Although, I'm totally going to use the giving up a big yard argument against my husband in the future as well ;)
ReplyDeleteWe'll have a fair amount of front yard, and we're in a cul-de-sac (which is actually a big part of the problem, because we're right at the edge of straight street and curve, and they have to set-back from the curve part), so our kids should have plenty of room to play. If that hadn't been the case I don't think I'd have let my husband talk me out of it!
DeleteWe got to look at the plat drawing before we even signed the Purchase Agreement. Our footprint expanded a bit with the 3 car side entry so on the plat we now see a pretty large landscaping area in the front. It's all how to fit the house as centrally into the lot as possible while complying with those "wonderful" easements.
ReplyDeleteThe first neighborhood we signed in, we got to see a preliminary plat. I'm kicking myself for not thinking to get one right off when we moved to our current neighborhood.
DeleteIm upset too with Ryan. We asked for a lot that was flat (or as flat as possible) to build a patio off of the morning room with just a couple steps and paid for a welled basement. At the Pre-con mtg last week the PM showed us that the basement would have two steps and there would be 8-10 steps coming off the morning room. WTH? I want that money off the purchase price? We broke ground on Monday. Ryan/NVR is never accountable for anything.
ReplyDeleteWow, that's a big deal! I would fight that one to the death...if you paid for welled then you should definitely get that money back. They had quoted us $5000 to clear our entire lot (instead of the standard 20 ft from back of house), and I was pissed that we would have been charged that when there was nothing to clear, but our SR said that they would have taken it off once they actually realized where the house was. Apparently the pricing doesn't always reflect the actual lot conditions. So fight this one, definitely!
DeleteIt's great having a card like that to use in the future.
ReplyDeleteIsn't it?! :D
Delete