After living and growing up in Florida, moving to Columbus, OH and then realizing that our TRUE home is in Cincinnati.... I can't believe that we are going to have a place of our own. And not only that, it's a dream home for us. Everything we could possibly want.
It seriously seems like a whirlwind for us, so let's look how we got here:
We had been in our town home for a full year (time flies, I'm tellin you!) and it was time to renew our lease. Jason and I knew that we really wanted a home of our own, but figured that we would sign another year long lease to give us time to get ready to buy a home.
We get all the information for our lease with the complex, and they give us two options...
1. Sign a lease for 6 months and pay NOTHING extra a month. Our payment stays the exact same,
its just a 6 month lease opposed to a year.
2. Sign a lease for another year and pay an additional $100 in rent.
Say WHAT?!?!
It actually makes sense. We originally signed our lease in December. So, by signing for another full year, that means they have to turn the town house over in the winter. And they don't want to do that. That means that signing for 6 months, we would have to either sign ANOTHER lease for a full year come June, or find us somewhere else to live.
This made me mad. You obviously don't value us as tennants if you want to raise our rent that much.
So to the drawing board I went. We had toyed around with new builds from the beginning, but still looked around for a home that was already built that had all we wanted.
That isn't an easy task. And we decided after some searching that maybe, just maybe.... we should go check out a new build. Why not get EVERYTHING that we want in a home the first time around?? So, one day while out and about, we followed one of the many signs you see on the sides of the road to go to a newly built community. It was a Ryan Homes neighborhood in Fairfield.
They were closed.
Womp womp.
But, it lead to research. And research lead to us going to a Ryan neighborhood called Stone Ridge Estates. Homes seemed within our price range, location was good {about 30 minutes for me to get to work, about 20 for Jason, and about 25 minutes to our summer home, Great American Ballpark}.
I filled out the little internet form for the community and we scheduled us an appointment to meet with Shelli.
{here's the link to Stone Ridge Estates if you want to see the community}.
We met with Shelli, who is just beyond amazing. I love her so much! We were able to take a look at the model home on site, the Naples, and immediately fell in love. It was out of the price range that we thought we would be able to afford, so I tried really hard to not fall in love. Too late.
I had in mind that I really wanted to see the Florence floor plan. Based on the PDF's online, this is what I wanted. 3 bedrooms, loft, basement, amazing soaking tub... It's what I wanted.
Shelli gave us information to go out and visit a local model of the Florence.
Let me tell you. When we got there, it was NOTHING what I thought it was going to be. Great building, but small. It wasn't designed how I would want our home to be designed. The gentleman at this model was really nice too and we chatted with him for a bit. He gave us some information about prequalifying for a loan with Ryan Homes sister company, NVR Mortgage. But, I was discouraged. I had been impressed by the builds themselves, but I knew that the Florence floor plan was not for us.
We hopped back in the car and went on our way. I did some internet research while Jason drove us home. After looking online, I went through the stuff that Shelli gave me earlier that day, and noticed that there was a floor plan called the Milan that I hadn't noticed before. How it slipped through the reasearch I had done, I'll never know. But here it was. 2500+ square feet. 3 bedrooms, a loft, basement... big soaking tub.... Maybe we needed to see this one.
Unfortunately, in Cincinnati, the Milan is a brand new floor plan being offered so there wasn't a model to visit at the time. HOWEVER, it just so happened that if we waited until the next week, Shelli had a home that was getting ready to close that was the Milan floorplan, and we could go visit it!!
YAY!
During that week, I researched other home builders. Custom builders, other ones that had been recommended... and for what I could find within what I "thought" to be our price range, as well as what we wanted in a house..... we either could not afford it, or it wasn't what we wanted.
So we impatiently waited until we could go and visit this brand spanking new home. I tried telling myself not to get my hopes up, because it might not be what we want.
But, it was everything we wanted. And more.
Our forever home, our dream home, it's the Milan. It is a great floor plan, great sized rooms, and all that we wanted.
I'm leaving this post with the floor plan of the Milan, and more story telling later. It appears that I'm pretty long-winded and have written quite a story. And this is just about how we decided on our floor plan and how we got to the point of wanting to build a new home.
I've started our blog a bit later than other new home bloggers have, from what I've seen, so I'm pretty much playing catch up right now. Which is good since we won't be in our home for about 5 months.
So, here's the floor plans... The rest of our story on the posts to follow!!
Can't wait to share more of our journey!!
Ashley
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