Our History
I'm L, my husband is M, and we started this process in 2009 when we purchased our land in the country. We spent time with Wayne Homes, K. Hovnanian Homes, and Schumacher homes getting quotes. Initially, we preferred Schumacher Homes because at that time they included many things as "standard" - like wood trim and even a fireplace. We got two very thourough quotes from them for the Olivia plan (now renamed) and its smaller version, the Pearson (also now renamed). Both plans were two-story homes with the master bedroom downstairs. At the time of our quote, we didn't feel comfortable with the cost and didn't want to sacrifice our wants and needs, so we decided to wait.
Fast forward to mid 2012 when mortgage rates were rediculously low, and we found ourselves investigating nearly every builder in our area, even pre-fab home builders. We were preparing to build in 2013 or early 2014. Each builder had a different quality that we liked, but we kept coming back to Wayne Homes. We tried to go back to Schumacher, but our original Home Consultant there wasn't interested in giving us a quote if we weren't interested in building right away, so we asked for a new one. Even though he was a lot of help, we had already invested a great deal of time with Wayne Homes and had built a solid rapport with our New Home Consultant. We also broke down the differences between the two builders and found we got more for our money with Wayne.
Decision Making, more decision making, and changing those decisions....
One of the biggest blessings and curses of this process was having the time to change our minds. When we started looking at homes, we investigated the Camden Craftsman. We thought that was enough square footage for us. When we visited a few homes of comparable size, we started wondering if it was too cramped. In February of 2013, our WH Home Consultant, Kristi, thought we should give the McCallister a try. This stuck for a little while, but both the hubby and myself kept going back to the Montgomery. This, I'm sure, was no fun for our home consultant who received many emails full of questions. Regardless, Kristi was always prompt and considerate and never made us feel like we were a pain to deal with....which was quite the blessing when we were making the biggest purchase in our entire lives.
Open Houses
Our first open house was quite an emotional roller coaster. I had been following blogs (Thanks OhioMags and Brent & Kristy!) and my husband and I were pretty positive the Montgomery was our floor plan...that is, until we walked into our first open house. There we were about two hours away, with our parents, brother, and two children.....completely underwhelmed. We didn't like the changes the homeowners had made to the plan. We felt like the dining room space wasn't defined enough and that the living area was cramped. We left and we were a complete mess because we didn't think this was a house for us, but we had already invested so much time.
Time was on our side when we got home, however. When we moved to the country in 2010, we watched the people down the road build a Wayne Home. We didn't know the plan, nor did we go to the open house because we weren't interested in building with Wayne Homes at the time. After investigating the Montgomery plan and elevations, we realized the house down the road was a Montgomery. Fearing that all of our time would be wasted if we had to start over again, hubby and I discussed stopping by and introducing ourselves in hopes that the people that lived there wouldn't think we were the creepiest people ever. Luckily, they were awesome and invited us in to show us around. Their plan was exactly what we were looking for. They had great things to say about WH. Given that we would probably have many of the same crews, this reassured the hubby and I and brought us off the edge of jumping and starting over.
Can you say referral credit? Because they saved our deal with WH. We signed contigent in April, but didn't stop doing our homework.
Over the next four months, we visted five open houses at various stages of construction. We took notes, we made changes, and we kept another builder in our back pocket in case this deal went bad. Needless to say, we stayed with Wayne Homes.
