Ryan Homes, Milan Floorplan

My Wife and I recently sold our home (the amazing thing is it only took 24 hours).  The quick sale of our old home put us into thinking mode and had us scrambling around for new home opportunities in the area.  We spent several weeks looking and never found a home that had what we were looking for within our price range. 

 

That's were Ryan Homes comes in.  To be honest with you we didn't start looking at new constructions initially because I didn't think it was possible to get what we were looking for in these typical cookie cutter neighborhoods where every home is stacked on top of the other.  here is the list of things we were looking for in order of necessity:

Great School System
Lots: approx. .5 acres and up
Cul-de-Sac lots
close to work, but not close to any major commercial areas
Homes that were of quality construction with energy savings built in

With that being said we wanted all of this for under 250K. (Sounds impossible, right?)

In the beginning of our search we just started punching in names of builders that we knew of in the area and checked out their websites.

(note to builders:  Many potential customers start here these days, and if your website is not full of details, and information about the homes your are currently offering, you ARE losing business.)

 

Once we narrowed it down to several builders who were actively selling in the areas we were looking for and within our price range, we started to look at the home plans and neighborhood layouts.

We found several that matched this basic criteria.  We drove to their neighborhoods and took a look at them in person.  We ended up looking at MI, Eastwood, True and Ryan.

True Homes makes a beautiful home with some great features and layouts, however by the time we added the options necessary to us we would have gone way over budget, They did not offer the standard options that some of the others did leading to more options therefore, more money.

Eastwood homes were also very nice, they didn't have the wow factor of True, but they had several options that the others did not, and the options made their homes very appealing.  The big issue with Eastwood was location,  They were just a bit farther out than we really wanted to go. 

MI homes probably impressed us the most.  The quality of construction was amazing, and the energy efficiency of their homes was outstanding.  Not the fit and finish of some of the others, but since my wife and I are very practical people and not interested in all the glitz and glamor options, they were 1st on the list at this point.  Their prices were also the best out of the whole group.  In the end, their neighborhood wasn't what we were looking for.  They had very small lots (.10 to .15 acre) and a very very restrictive HOA. 

 

So the last builder we looked at was Ryan Homes.  (of course it was, once you find what your looking for why would you keep looking).  Ryan Homes had several neighborhoods in this area, but only one was within our price range and still actively selling.  We went to look at the Sheridan neighborhood and fell in love.  The neighborhood didn't look or feel like your typical big builder neighborhood, the homes were spaced out and because there are actually several different builders in the neighborhood, all the homes did not look the same.  The best thing about this neighborhood was the lots.  They were due to release a half acre lot within the next week or two that was in a Cul-de-Sac and had only a 5K premium on the lot.  This was leaps and bounds above most of the other neighborhoods we looked at.  Most other neighborhoods with other builders had at least a 2.5K premium on every lot in the neighborhood, and some even had premiums as high as 20K for larger, but still unusable (due to grade) lots. 

                                                              (This is our home site)

My wife and I always looked at it this way.  The important thing to us with new construction was the lots, location and price.  As long as they met those requirement, most all builders will have a home plan that we can learn to love.  Ryan just happened to be the only one that could meet those standards. 

Above is a picture of the lot we chose.  half acre wooded lot in a cul-de-sac.  The lot backs up to an empty field which is the future build site for the Redeemer Church (I'm not sure about their denomination, but could it could be our future Sunday meeting spot.)  There is a small common area to the right of the lot that separates our lot from our neighbors, but there does not appear to be any plans for future development in the area.  It's almost everything we wanted and then some.  We are very happy and blessed to have found such a great lot and at such a great price.