Building: The starting point

As you know we kind of fell into building. I don't want to say that we rushed the decision but we definitely jumped to it quickly. Given our not so great house hunting path over the past few months, I think that building had been crossing our minds for a while but Toledo didn't have the same opportunities for building as there are in Columbus. Regardless I want to take a little time and talk about the starting point and how we came to decide on the builder and plan we chose.

Going into the process we had to factor in that certain builders only built in their own communities while other builders would only build on land we had purchased ourselves. Taking that into consideration, we knew that we would automatically have to eliminate any builder that would only build on land we owned because we didn't have the land or the time/money/energy to purchase land. After eliminating that round of builders we went through the list of builders that we could afford and took a look at floor plans, location of communities, and tried to find reviews online to help us decide We focused a lot more on the overall look and location of homes at first deciding to research reviews once we found a couple of builders we really liked. Once we found a couple builders that seemed reputable we did some more digging and research through online boards and Google. Through that process we narrowed it down to Dominion Homes and M/I Homes but the more I dug, the more negative things I found about Dominion whereas M/I had a good mix of reviews. Plus we both liked the look of M/I a little more. So off to M/I we went to talk to them about possibly building with them.

Stepping the M/I show room it was pretty impressive but we had some questions and really wanted to see an actually house. The woman we met with was super sweet and informative, she took us to some models and let us walk around, answered every question we had and put no pressure on us whatsoever. After seeing some of the potential houses and options she asked us to pick one we thought we liked best, put in some options and gave a ball park figure for the price of the house and our monthly payments so we would have a good idea to think about. She sent us off with her e-mail address and phone number so we could contact her if any questions came up and sent us on our merry way.

We headed home with a lot to think about and consider. We talked it over, wrote pro/con lists, but found that we the more we talked and wrote the more we wanted to build with M/I. Once that decision was made we had to decide which plan we liked best. We knew that if we were going to build we wanted to get a house that had room to grow since it seems pretty silly to buy a brand new house and have to move in a few years when we grow out of it. There was one house in particular that stood out for both of us that met our needs list: 3-4 bedrooms, at least 1.5 baths and a good sized living area. That house was the Rosemary plan.

Now that we had a builder and a plan we had to go through all of our selections, which is a story for another day.