I spoke with our loan officer today regarding our 30 day rate lock, and as usual, the conversation and communication was A+. I point that fact out because in all of this process, namely, the homebuilding process...communication is so crucial! But I digress, first things first, we locked our rate (yayyy!). But on the other hand, thanks to our closing occurring post-election, the rates now are higher than they were pre-election (boooo). Regardless, our LO discussed what options we had to achieve the monthly mortgage estimate we originally were sold on, and the convo went well. We're scheduled to close in mid-January, so we'll see how that goes!
For those that have been through this process, or considering going through it, one of the MANY "gotchas", when it comes to building your house is choosing your elevation. According to
http://homeguides.sfgate.com/house-elevations-39208.html
Elevations are architectural drawings of a building's exterior. In architectural drawing terms, house elevations are two dimensional pictures of the façade of a house or interior features that have faces projecting from a flat, solid background, like cabinetry, fireplaces, niches and elaborate wall designs.
In this case, when it comes to say the Avalon, there's a myriad of options to choose from. I'll include a few just to give you an idea.
So here's the thing. You don't "have" to pay for an elevation. Your house will come with siding or wood or brick or stone water front etc., But I like to think of the elevation as a crucial part of making your otherwise cookie cutter home, look distinct and personal. For instance I once read a blog where the writer noted how somewhere around 25% of the homes in their development were X (I forget what model they mentioned, maybe it was Dunkirks? or Victoria Falls? I don't recall, I'll find it later I think and link to it).
To be clear, Ryan Homes tries to enforce some sort of model and elevation diversity in the community. For instance, if our neighbor across from or besides us had an Avalon, they could NOT have the same elevation as us.
The thing is, as one would imagine, elevations can be expensive. So if you are OK with the default vinyl or plastic or whatever siding, you're good to go. However, if you want stone, or brick, and depending on where you want stone and/or brick...things get expensive really quickly. Ranging from 0 (default) to $20K! In any event, I pushed for brick (and the aforementioned hip roof), because I think curb appeal goes a long way, and to be quite frank, I had fell in love with red brick some time ago and knew I wanted it.
Ryan Homes has a nice fancy color visualizer, that allows you to select your brick and trim colors (this comes after you select your elevation with the sales rep). Ours came out like this:
What's interesting is, first, our windows are not that nice looking (boooo!!) and second, our elevation doesn't really look like that at all. You can be the judge, but here are some pics so far:
