Switched to NVRM

Yes.... We had to! Since we locked with FFSI, a lot has happened! All the back n forth with RH on the upgrades and lot of discussion about NVRM quotes. Not  to forget the added expense of our new bathroom upgrade, which we will have to pay upfront and the changed sales price etc etc etc.

Now RH has agreed to pay the "preferred lender incentive" in cash at the closing. And NVRM's "origination fee" has been finally waived completely. So the deal became much more lucrative!

Also our time line moved out about 7-10 days with master bath upgrade. Don't know how much more it will move, given that our PM might be quitting! (Just heard about it, don't know all the details yet.....it'll need a totally different post) We din't want to take any chances there.

So taking all these things into consideration and ever increasing rates,  we locked in with NVRM today at 4.75%, which is still .125% higher than other banks. But it came down to today Vs tomorrow money and about 25-30$ difference in monthly payments, I think I can live with that.....

Progress and Pictures!

Hope you all had a great holiday weekend. We had a blast....we went away to a cabin in woods of Daniel Boone Forest, KY with family and friends. We needed that break. No phone calls, no internet, no laptop! And it feels good to be back (relaxed) and connected once again. :-)

I took time to catch up with all my bloggers friends this morning. Its nice to know that many of you had made so much progress. Very happy for you.

I realized that with everything else... issues, communication gaps, rain, rain and rain  I have been neglecting the fun part.... Progress and Pictures! So here it is..... Brick's almost done, siding is done too, we have some gutters etc in place. Also we saw a framing inspection list of "things to be fixed", so I guess they had the first round of inspection. We also visited rite rug today to pick out the tile for our new bathroom. We did not change the previous tile we picked for the floor, we just added its counter part - wall tile for the tub surround and shower and the accent tile that goes with it. That was easy!

So here are few pictures of the finished brick.  :-)

The Back Side. They had finished siding on the Fireplace area, but I couldn't get the updated pictures after all that rain! Our backyard is a pool!

Front Elevation

We are missing the cream accent brick on the dormer window and the curved foyer window.

Siding on the dormer and other gable

They boxed in the electrical and plumbing stuff hanging out by the Garage side of the wall.

New Master Bath selection!

 We had our pre drywall meeting on June 21st. And with the added bathroom change, we may see some framing changes. So I'm getting a little anxious about the pace. I want to see some dry wall!! Hopefully it will be sometime soon. Our over all target date is pushed by 7-10 days with added changes, and they say we are still on track for that. Fingers crossed!

On again....Off again.... On again......

First of all, Thank You All for your support, comments and wishes. My husband (like most of you suggested) had convinced me not to let the little things ruin our home building experience. After listening to all you guys and my husband, I did calm down a lot and I dropped the idea of going to the corporate folks. But, I was definitely going to have a chat with our SR and/or his manager.

So here are some updates!! Good ones... :-)

Our SR informed us that they have approved our request of upgrading the master bath at this point of construction. We were already given a heads up that it will cost us more, and we will have to pay the amount at closing as they cannot add it to the loan amount at this point. And of course, there will be some change to the schedule. And today our SR called with the details, we gave us the number that we will have to pay (it was about twice the upgrade price :-( ). And our closing will be pushed by a week.

My husband and I took sometime to discuss and finally decided to go for it! So we called our SR and informed him that we'd like to go with the upgrade. He said he'll have everything documented and have us sign some paperwork tomorrow with all changes - added master bath upgrade and the attic money we are getting back. So that's how it came up.... and the conversation got interesting!

 I first thanked my SR and told him that we very much appreciate that his manager and he went out of their way to get the approval for the master bath upgrade, but we were very unhappy with the way his manager spoke to my husband over the phone on Sunday about the attic issue. I also said that when nothing was put on the paper, we have the right to discuss it more...until they came up with a resolution that we would be satisfied with. And we talked for a little bit and our SR owned up to everything. He said he had a chat with his manager about that, as he too thinks that the way his manager acted wasn't right and we can expect a call from him. He apologized to us and asked us to give him a chance to make it up to us. He promised that he will make our journey smooth, stress-free and enjoyable from here on.

I feel alot better after having this conversation and I'm getting the upgraded master bath!! :-)
I'm feeling guilty about spending a lot of money on it and still kicking myself for not picking this option earlier. But my husband says it's for the best, and we will enjoy our home a lot more, for years to come!! :-)

No points for Customer Service

There has been a lot of back and forth with our SR and his Manager during the last week about the issues we have had so far.

We drove to the model to meet with the SR on Thursday and we noticed that they had started brick on the master bathroom side of the house, which had been held off till they make a decision on upgrading the master bath. I was furious to see that's how we know about there decision. After meeting with our SR, we caught him up on what had happened when he was out.

He clarified that the decision on the master has not been taken yet and he doesn't know why the workers are bricking that side of the house, as they certainly had ordered them not to! He said they would know by the end of the day Thursday about the decision concerting the upgrade and his Manager will call us. Our SR wasn't sure what the discrepancy was on the attic area. We informed him that his manager had walked with us to the site and agreed that the attic area wasn't built the way it was suppose to be and he would give us our money back! We also expressed our displeasure in their easy resolution of returning the money for attic upgrade.

We did not hear from our SR's manager on Thursday, we did not hear from our SR and PM on Friday (our usual project update meeting) and nobody called us on Saturday either. So Saturday evening we sent a text message to our SR asking why we had not received any updates from him. He replied saying they were extremely busy as its end of the month, but he will set-up something for Sunday, as his Manager will also be at the model and we all can get together and discuss stuff.

We did not hear from them all day Sunday. Then my husband received a call from our SR and his Manager around 6.00 in the evening. And my husband told me that the SR's  manager was being very rude to him! He said that we had agreed on receiving the money back on the attic issue and we should not be discussing it with them anymore. And he also said that we will have to sign an invoice for the bathroom upgrade and they'll start working on it.

So they can take 3 weeks to decide what they want to do about bathroom upgrade, charge us thrice the money. But if they do something wrong they'll give us the money back.
I think its all my fault, I shouldn't have agreed with him about receiving the money back without taking time to think about it. Because that is what he is holding us to!

We never expected them to give away any free stuff, we had agreed to pay for the upgrade we were requesting! Neither did we insist on them fixing the attic area. But once we had the time to think about it and we took our family's opinion on it, we were not happy about their resolution, that's all we told to our SR. Our family and friends said that we are letting them off very easy!!

I DO NOT appreciate the manager's tone with my husband. We have a meeting with our SR today and he will hear from us as much! At this point I'm almost thinking walking away from the house. My husband says we should reconcile with them, he loves our house end of day. But I'm not sure if I want to deal with such people anymore. Is decent customer service too much to ask when you are buying a 400K house?

I know lot of people would answer this question towards the end, but if I had to do this again I would not do any business with Ryan Homes! Neither do I recommend them to anybody.
 

Locked in....

We have locked a rate with an outside lender. It's definitely higher than what we would have liked, but hey! rates are climbing and that's a fact we got to face. This is the best rate and closing cost estimate we got in today's market. We would have liked to work with NVRM (they still have a chance, by the way) but NVRM was just not competitive. Their rates have been consistently higher (at least by a quarter point) than everybody else in the market and their closing costs are exactly higher by the "preferred lender incentive" amount offered by RH, so they are not "incentives" after all!

We have been constantly telling them how we feel about their rates and costs. We have sent them several GFEs as proof, and even today we sent them the GFE from "our" lender. If they can't come down, they loose our business! We are still saving like 3 grand (taking into account the lost "incentive"). So no regrets, I guess!

Oh, and one more thing.... Our lender said if we get a better "realistic" rate from another bank during the lock-in period, he would match it, to keep our business. Also, if the rates should fall (at least by a quarter point) from now to our closing date, our rate would go down too by .125% (comparative to the market), at the closing. So we can still hope for a dip in the rates!!!

Update on previously identified issues...

Not a lot going on right now for us.... brick is coming along and this week, hopefully, we'll pass all the electric, plumbing, and framing inspections to get ready for some drywall!

If you have read my previous posts, you'll remember that there are 2 issue that we have been discussing with RH. 1) We wanted to upgrade our master bathroom and 2) We had opted for additional attic space by our bonus room, which was an upgrade option and we don't think we are getting that.
My husband has been trying to reach our SR's Manager since last Tuesday, but its very hard to get with him! But fortunately, we walked into the model home on Sunday afternoon to check few things in the blueprints, and there he was, working on somebody's training. We were surprised to see him there. Anyways, so he saw us and agreed to have a quick meeting. My husband and I discussed with him these two issues and he checked our blueprints and then he walked with us to our site.
On the attic issue he confirmed that the blueprints show different design than what was built, it was suppose to be a space for future expansion but the way it was built, it could never be useful or finished!Our PM had confirmed that in our pre drywall meeting on Friday. The SR's Manager couldn't explain why they changed, but he said we are not getting what we paid for, so he will return the money paid for that upgrade. So, we are not going to have any spare attic space!

We debated for a long time on the master bath and he was trying to make it sound as an almost impossible job to do at this point. Our SR had said that it would be a one day job (after we close), so certainly, it should be fairly simple modification before drywall! Finally, he said he will escalate this issue to his superiors and see what they can do. He also mentioned that (if at all they decide to change it) it will cost us more than 2k which is the price of the upgrade, at this point. We are expecting to hear from him on Wednesday. One other catch is that we will have to pay cash for this change as he said the loan amount (which was approved for us) with NVR cannot be changed.... But I'm thinking  we did not lock with NVR, so if we go with another lender, we can include this is the sales prices of the house....right? Well, we'll see about that!
Yesterday we found out from our PM that he has been asked not to put brick around the master bath window, just in case if they decide to go with the upgrade they may have to move the window to center it.

I guess my hubby and I are are happy that this issue has been escalated! We were feeling that nobody was listening to us, or cares what we want in our house. We still realize that they may come back saying they can't make changes or with a big number.....but still I want to know what they decide!
Specially when they made a mistake with the attic option, it was a simple fix of  "giving the money back". But what if we insisted on the getting the attic area?! Would they change all the HVAC units and structure as they were suppose to build it that way in the first place?

Pre Dry Wall Meeting!

We had our pre dry wall meeting today with our PM. We met him at our home site and he walked us through the house, explained where all the electrical and plumbing rough-ins, power outlets placements etc were. He answered all our questions. Our PM also confirmed that the stuff that we spotted on the wood is not mold, and they'll clean all that up!

But we noticed something different with our attic space..... We had selected an upgrade which would make our 10x20 attic space load bearing with an access (full size) door as oppose to the regular access panel. We had talked but possible future expansion in this area. But the attic space we have now is not suitable for any expansion. Though its weight bearing, there are sloping frames (no head room) and this space is housing the 2 HVAC units. And there is no door! We have the regular access panel. Our PM said it's nothing different than what they were doing in other houses and he showed us his drawings, so I guess we need to sort it out with our SR or his Manager, cos we paid like $900 extra dollars for this. 

We found out that our SR is on vacation for a week and my husband is trying to talk to his manager for 4 days now, about the master bath issue. Now we also have this attic issue to discuss. And our PM suggested we get with them ASAP! I hope we'll get to meet him this weekend.

Coming to the timeline, our PM said that there are few inspections we are yet to pass, so the drywall will take 3 weeks start to finish and we are looking at about 30 days after that! With that info, we should be able to close around 2nd week of August.

They started with our brick yesterday!! I was very nervous about our brick color but We like it!!!

Here are some pictures of our brick,  tub and shower...

Our shower in the master

Our tiny "upgraded" tub

Brick color...zoomed in!

Back wall....

In the front....garage wall

Frame for the portico over the front door