Building a house

[MovingForward_2012]

The builder Ryan Homes that you describe sounds like KB Homes here. I have had "the pleasure" of living in 3 different KB Homes over the years. Banister just dropped to the floor on one of them one day. Carpet installed stained so easily...you had 30 seconds to scrub it out or it was in there forever. One of them had a garage door that just all of a sudden broke one day. I was heading to the store, pushed garage door button...door started to open then all of a sudden a bolt flew out of the unit and cracked my windshield! It was the loudest pop noise I ever heard. I looked in the rear view mirror after that and watched as the garage door came flying downward on the rails until it slammed shut. That really ticked me off and freaked me out at the same time. The house wasn't even 4 years old! The house we moved from was much more sturdier. The garage was still working when we left and it was 12 years old.

KB Homes out here basically builds partially manufactured homes that were partially assembled in a factory. They bring out these huge storage containers and lift out of them these preassembled walls etc. In our neighborhood that we bought a home in, Lennar still has A LOT of homes to build that are already sold...there are no more available inventory homes or lots, they are all gone so we nabbed the last one for sale. There was another couple that looked at our home and left super excited the builder said but they said they had to think about it. I whipped out that checkbook faster than lightning! Lo and behold, that couple called the next day to put in an offer but it was too late.

But anyways, point of my story is that when you drive through the homes being built, they have metal tubs of lumbar sitting at the edge of the driveway of each home being built. And they assemble all 3,000 parts on site! Lennar has a reputation in Colorado of building homes "the old fashioned way". They don't put up chunks of already assembled cookie cutter parts. They build it on site from the ground up. I don't know if Ryan homes does this too but I would consider driving by and looking at how the other homes are built. Look at the techniques they use to get a feel for the quality of the home. The quicker it is put up, usually the more low quality it is. KB Homes out here builds what I call, detached SFHs that are one step up from mobile home quality as the houses come preassembled in big chunks and they put together a lot less on site.

Luckily our home is in between finished homes so we don't hear a lot of construction noise as they are way down the street. Occasionally, we will hear a faint hammering noise or a truck coming in but that's it. There are a lot of dogs that like to take their little walks in the mornings on the trail directly behind our house. :-)

[MovingForward_2012]

Oh and I looked up our property taxes. They are $3100 a year and $73 for HOA. So about 1% of the purchase price.

[MovingForward_2012]

One more post: I looked up Ryan Homes in Denver and they are all custom built upscale homes. So out here Ryan Homes are no where near the poor quality of KB Homes. These Ryan homes in Denver are absolutely amazing:

http://www.ryanhomescolorado.com/portfolio.php

Are these the same style of the Ryan homes you are looking at NY?

[dpittsmd1985]

We are interested in a Lennar community.  We viewed one of the decorated models, and then an inventory home.  We did not go to the sales center to price the upgrades but I hope their upgrade prices are not exorbitant. 

[rubu]

you have mixed up...this is two different companies....http://www.ryanhomes.com/ That is what in east coast they do not build in Colorado.  

What you are looking at is a upscale builder. LOL Ryan homes houses here must be worth quater of the value of those houses in Colorado LOL... Look at them details

[MovingForward_2012]

Yeah I know! Those homes are absolutely amazing! I wish upon a star! LOL! I apologize...didn't know there was another builder by the name of Ryan.

Our Lennar home was upgraded to the max with $51,000 worth of upgrades. We got all of them except the storm door. So I think you get quite a bit for the money through Lennar. I have paperwork of all the upgrades itemized if you are interested in knowing the cost of a particular item.

[rubu]

Please do....it would help a lot.

[MovingForward_2012]

Okay. I will look them up and post them in a little bit.

[JM-AM]

While sometimes you get a better built home even using Ryan Homes, because the areas and the contractors working on the homes do different type of work.

My self personally doesnt like Ryan Homes (I agree what they use for materials is cheap on east coast), and if you have to deal with NVR for your financing to get incentives, then I will warn you that you will be slammed from every side possible.

The business model is to keep as much as possible in house, from sales department to mortgage department. It gives the parent company the most profit.

On a side note if you do purchase a Ryan home, or NV Home, or Fox Ridge Home, you can still obtain incentives and use your own LO or Broker. You may have to negotiate more, or know how to walk away from a deal. I dont care how big a company feels they are and wont deal with you, eventually they are only as big and popular as the customers they have. If they cant sell homes they shrink fairly quickly.

There are too many builders out there who are willing to work with you. Some are better and better quality and some are probably worse. My way of doing things is to look at developement area and homes just built, and then try to find another area that they completed several years ago and see how the homes are holding up. I have actually knocked on doors and spoke to people who were living in the house when we went home shopping for daughter and asked questions on how they handled any warranty repair in the 1st year, if they are having any major problems since they purchased home, do they know of anyone in developement who may have had issues due to the construction of the home, just to name a few.

[foofighter74]

Yeah, these homes are not built with preassembled parts.  And you're going to hear bad things about ANY builder if you talk to enough people.  We looked at a lot of different things...the bottom line is that in this area, i know where Ryan gets the lumber, i know what companies supply the windows, where the contractors are from and I know at least a dozen families that have lived in a Ryan home for years.  I've heard few complaints.  If you stay on top of them during the process, get your own appraisal, and get any issue that does pop up taken care of immediately, there's no issue. 

This is much like buying a car - there are people who say they will never buy a Ford.  They will only buy Chevy trucks. Five other people will say they would never buy a Chevy, they only buy Ford. 

However I would echo what JM was saying about NVR mortgage - if at all possible, do not use them.  We are getting closing cost assistance from Ryan even though we aren't using NVR.  Now, we didn't get much in terms of free upgrades or anything like that, but we weren't really interested in them anyway. 

Our daycare provider lives in the same development we are going to build in, and she was involved in the process weekly -they even changed some of their blueprints, and if she saw something she didn't like while they were building, she complained about it until it was addressed.  She couldn't be happier with the house.  Her husband is an engineer, and he's done his own electrical work as well, and he spent a great deal of time pouring over the blueprints, and did his own inspections at night during the summer.  His seal of approval was sort of the last step for us in signing a contract - that and the fact that our house will be constructed about 3 minutes from his back yard, and he'll be able to keep an eye on things himself.