Starting Out

So the journey begins...Once we decided to build a new house instead of buying pre-existing, we had to first select a community.  School district was first on our list.  Next came location of the community.  Tied into location was the cost of whatever model we chose, as there was a 30K difference from the lowest starting priced community to the highest.

Two models made the final cut, the Florence and Venice.  As I stated in my introduction, there were details that had the Venice come out as the winner.  After the model choice came the lot selection, and where we decided to build there were only two lots left.  One had a 4K premium attached to it, but when we thought about it, for us it wouldn't be a premium location.  The other lot seemed small...which it was, but its hard to envision how the house would end up looking.  So we thought about it for a day or so, and walked the community talking to people who already lived there, and everyone we met had only good things to say, not only about the community, but the Ryan experience itself.  So we decided to move forward on the smaller lot, and a Venice model, elevation K.

Next came the fun part...picking out options.  From lurking on all the other Ryan blogs the advice  of adding as much as possible before final negotiation was in the back of my mind.  Also there was the sage words of "This part can get real expensive...real fast".  We had a price point we didn't want to go over, having already looked at what we could buy already on the market, so our thinking was to put as much as we could up to that point and decide what we could live without if need be.

Next up..our choices.