Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Lot Lines

I drove directly to the development today after work to time it; its about forty-five minutes from door to door.  Except I don't know where the second door is going to be.  Or if there will be a second door.  BF and I spent about a half an hour on site looking at each lot (there are only a few) and weighing the pros and cons of each one.  We don't really like any of them particularly (more of that story to come) - how do you choose between three or four options when you are indifferent?  Several of the lots back up to an older part of town, that is close to a major road.  The road noise was louder than we would have thought possible, but more of a consideration is what might happen in a few years to the tiny railroad crossing hamlet of houses that look like they've outlived their useful life?  If a Wawa or Royal Farms goes up right behind a house we've mortgaged ourselves to the bone for, we are going to be pretty unhappy.  So, what to do?

Its tough to get excited about spending 300k+ and moving when the available lots aren't exactly perfect in every way (not that I could even tell you what exactly perfect in every way is!)

There was one lot that we loved - it was wooded on one side and sort of secluded, but we over thought it.  The woods are privately owned and not protected open space, so the owner could do whatever he wanted to property that I know we would eventually feel was ours.  Plus, it was very close to the railroad tracks - within 500 feet.  The train doesn't run often, but it runs at night and I'm a light sleeper.  I know Ryan homes are supposed to be air-tight, but I don't know how sound proof they are.  So, while we were considering all of these things, another buyer started the contract process on it.  We simply waited too long.

Its the story of my life.

So, how did you make your lot decisions, not knowing who would be next to you, what their house would look like and whether they would think that planting plastic tulips in their yard counted as gardening (true story)?

5 comments:

  1. Honestly, you are over thinking... I just went with my gut! I had about 8 to pick from and just wanted to get started so bad I just picked the one I wanted and went with it! You can get bad neighbors anywhere! Just go with what you feel is right and try not to over think it :) good luck and welcome to the blogging site!

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  2. I picked the lot that had the biggest backyard that way my daughter has a yard to run around in. I could have picked a lot that had no backyard neighbor but yard was small so I picked the biggest and I am glad we did! If you are unhappy with the lots are there other ryan home developers nearby? There are three ryan home developers in our town but we choose the one where it was a closer commute to work.

    Congrats on making a decision to build with ryan and welcome to our little blogging world.

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  3. We spent 3 years looking before we found the right lot. Because we live in Western PA, there are hills everywhere and it was very hard for us to find a lot that was big enough and had a decent flat backyard. We finally found a plan that just went on the market and was were lucky enough to put a hold on a lot that we liked that fit our needs/wants. It was later that we found out that the lot was a premium lot in the plan and it cost us an additional $15k.

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  4. We spent a ton of time looking for a lot to fit our Avalon and almost gave up the solarium to fit it onto a nice lot. Needless to say a new section of an existing development opened up right when we were trying to decide AND of the 30ish lots available we could fit the Avalon with solarium on 6 of the corner lots...we picked our lot based solely on how the sun will track across the sky and fill our house with sunlight...so knowing that we have the morning room, sunroom, and solarium we wanted the sun to rise to the back of the house filling the solarium, sunroom and morning room with sun...then as the heat of the day approaches the sun will be hammering away on the garage side of the house and rooms like the solarium and sunroom will be nice and comfortable and we will be able to entertain in the solarium(wine bar) and not have to worry about getting blinded by late afternoon low in the sky sun....so in a nut shell we put a lot of thought into which lot.

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  5. btw...I forgot to say welcome welcome welcome...ask questions and share your problems and ideas...we love to help and offer suggestions.

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