Settelment

Today was the settlement.  We used the NVR settlement company (which NVR mortgage choose for us, but I think we could have requested someone else).  Settlement took forever because they weren't quite ready for us.  We waited around for 30 minutes before they had our paperwork.  There is a large stack of papers to sign.  The settlement guy in there with us was happy to explain any of the documents we were signing, wait patiently while we read anything we wanted.  I had mixed feeling about reading all of the documents, on one hand it is good to know what you are signing, but on the other hand if you didn't agree with something you have no negotiation power to do anything about it.  Plus these same forms are being signed by thousands of other people.  I did a speed read of all the documents, I wanted to roughly know what was going.  It took about 2.5 hours to sign everything.  But at the end they handed over the keys and we were on our way.

We obviously went straight to our new home.  There we found a welcome basket from Ryan Homes.  There isn't much advice to give for this stage of the process so this post will be short.  I'll just say make sure that the sprinklers are watering the new sod often.  New sod needs lots of water.

Pre Settlement Inspection

Today I met my home inspector and did my pre-settelment walk through with him.  As I have mentioned in other posts it is important to have a home inspector take a look at your new house as it is for them to look at old houses.  My inspector told me about how he was looking at a deck on a new house and found one of the footings cracked completely through, it was just a matter of time before it broke apart completely.  The whole inspection took about two hours (although I hear it varies quite a bit).  I scheduled it for the day before my walk through with the project manager (which is tomorrow), that way we didn't need to rush.  The cleaning crew was also there making sure it looked clean for settlement.

I walked around with my home inspector and some of the things we examined were:

• We turned the AC on and measured the temp of the air coming out of the vents (he had a meat thermomitor looking thing to do this) and then turned the heat on and did the same.  It looked good.
• We ran all of the appliances in the kitchen and made sure they worked and that if everything on the stove (all the burners and oven) was on the breaker didn't trip.
• We opened up the furnace down stairs and ensured the proper filters were there.  He also found that the safety switch for the furnace cover was taped down which wasn't good.  It is designed to turn off if the furnace cover is open so you (or your kids) can't electrocute yourself. 
• Checked the toilets, he found one that had a slow leak, wasting water.
• He checked that all the breakers work as they were supposed to.
• He checked the sump pump.
• He checked the GFCI outlets.
• He also found a couple scratches on the cabinets and mirrors.
• He checked every window making sure it was sealed well, opened and closed well.  One window was a bit tight.
• We walked around the outside, he made sure the spigots worked well, found a piecie of siding that wasn't tucked in as it should.
• There were end caps missing off the molding near the garage door.
• He checked that garage door and the safety features of the garage all worked as they were supposed to.

He checked a gazillion other things as well, but this was some of the stuff that we checked and found wrong. In the end I had a list of about 12 things to give to the project manager that we wanted fixed.

The inspection was about $200, and considering how small that is compared to the home I think it is worth it.  He also found problems that if I hadn't found on my own would have cost more than $200 to fix.  He just knew to look for things that I wouldn't have looked at.

I emailed the list to my project manager and I will see him tomorrow and we can go over the list and he can do his walk through.

Our kitchen

The outside of the house with the new sod.

Walk through to look at cabinets and stuff

We are a few weeks away from closing on the house.  Today we had a walk through where we verified that some of the selections we made are correct.  The project manager couldn't make it so the assistant project manager met us.

All the drywall is up and the house is very close to being finished.  We checked out the kitchen cabinets and marble counter top.  We also checked out the bathroom tiles.  The flooring (carpet and such) was not in yet (I don't know if that is normal).  All of this took a total of 15 minutes at most.  Afterwards he let us roam around and look at the whole house.  We measured some of the windows and locations for appliances (Fridge, washer, dryer and stuff like that).  We didn't get any additional appliances from Ryan Homes and plan on replacing the basic stove, vent and dish washer that comes with the house so this was a good chance to get measurements because we'll buy the appliances before we settle.

Not much else to say.  The only point of this meeting was to verify some of the selections so if they made a mistake they had time to fix it.