Allen Edwin’s New Home Showroom is massive. The major rooms (the kitchen and bathroom) are represented nicely. The rest of the showroom is sectioned off into areas like – Outside elements (garage, siding, outside lighting, outside doors, roofing), Interior elements – doors, flooring/carpeting, molding, and door hardware, and lighting.

I went into the experience without prior knowledge of anything – pricing, showroom layout, options, etc. Before you get to the big day, someone from Allen Edwin will send you a list of what comes standard in your home. Standard doors, cabinets, countertop choice, etc. I’m not going to lie… the standard stuff is very basic.

Before receiving this list, you schedule your first and second selections appointment, which takes place in the New Home Showroom.

The New Home Showroom was the part of this beginning build process that I was most excited for! Before going to our first selections appointment, my husband and I had an honest talk about expectations. We didn’t want it to be like Disney Land, where anything and everything could come to fruition.

We wanted to keep our feet planted firmly on the ground and work within a budget. So, we focused on what was most important for us and what would work best for our family overall. When it seems like the sky is the limit, it is very easy to get lost in that. Especially, at your first selections appointment. While, it would have been fun to just let go and choose the best of everything, in the end, I knew it would suck to have to remove those “dream home” items from the list. So, we started basic and worked upward.

We spent most of our budget on the kitchen and adding a finished rec room in the basement. Having more space overall was one of the most important things on our wishlist. Having a nice kitchen was the next thing. Basically, we wanted the big stuff to be taken care of.

Allen Edwin had SO many options! We were presented with the base options initially. “This is what your home comes with” our design consultant would say. If we were interested in upgrading from the base, then we were presented with options. They have 3 levels of upgrades and depending upon the area that you are looking at – like flooring, for instance. Depending on the type of flooring you choose, you have additional options. So, 3 levels of wood flooring, 3 levels of vinyl flooring, 3 levels of carpeting and so on. It is both fun and madness!

I will say that the 3-4 hour initial appointment though awesome, is pretty overwhelming overall. There are many things to think about apart from the flooring, cabinets, lighting, and paint. You also have to think about the garage, siding, doors (inside and out), hardware for the doors, how many cable boxes, cat 6 boxes, the size of your water heater, etc.

If I could change anything about my experience at the New Home Showroom it would be that I would have taken more time to look at the options for the bathroom. Once we were done picking out the kitchen stuff and the flooring, it felt like we didn’t have much budget left to work with to upgrade other things like the bathroom.

Overall, I am really happy with our selections and it’s so exciting to see these choices come together in our new home! 🙂

 

 

 

As I lay… building?

I’m starting a new series on this blog to journal my new-home build experience with Allen Edwin Homes. This past August, my husband and I decided to build a new home. It was a decision we made partly due to the fact that we weren’t finding anything on the market that fit our needs and also because we don’t have it in us to get into a bidding war over a house. This is the nature of the real estate market beast in our area, currently.

It has always been a dream of mine to build a home so, I don’t want to forget even the smallest detail of the entire experience!

In the beginning with Allen Edwin. Hello Jeff!

We contacted Allen Edwin Homes in mid-August and set an appointment with Jeff, our sales counselor. We met Jeff at a possible location, which as it turned out, wasn’t the layout or location for us. However, Jeff did an awesome job assessing our needs. Though Allen Edwin wasn’t the only home builder we were meeting with, Jeff left us with an overwhelmingly positive impression. So, making our decision to choose Allen Edwin, in the end, was an easy one.

I’m not going to lie, I read all of the reviews and have done extensive research on Allen Edwin and the other home builders we considered. Allen Edwin does not have the greatest reviews overall, which really made me hesitate – at first. My husband’s friend had built his home with Allen Edwin and had nothing but good things to say. At the same time, the realtor we chose to represent us during this transaction had previous experience with Allen Edwin, which also went smoothly.

Let’s talk the nitty gritty

Now, my husband and I are not first-time home buyers, which means, we have a house to sell. Our down payment on the new home will come from the sale of our current home.  To be honest, when we started this journey, I wasn’t sure that we’d be able to do it because of this. However, Allen Edwin has teamed up with MarketPlace Homes to offer a great program. The basics of the program are that MarketPlace Homes will sell our house at a 1% commission rate. They will time the sale of the home strategically to right before our new home is finished. If they can’t sell our house, then they will purchase it at 90% of what it is worth in the current market. For Allen Edwin, this is a win – because our home is guaranteed to sell.

There are no reviews that I could find on the internet currently about this particular MarketPlace Homes program. Everything I have read mentions renting or using them as a liaison to get into being a landlord but nothing about their program with Allen Edwin. I am glad to be able to share my experience with others. I will say that Rachel with MarketPlace Homes is a gem and has been very upfront about the expectations. She put my mind at ease, even though there are still so many unknowns as we aren’t putting our home up on the market for another 6 months or so.

If we didn’t go the route of this MarketPlace program, then we would have had to have 5% down. In this scenario, Allen Edwin still assumes the construction loan.

Yay! No construction loan!

Unlike with traditional home builders, we don’t have to get a construction loan. This is nice because construction loans are risky for banks. Also, the money that you spend on the construction loan does not go toward your down payment or even the cost of building the house. The purpose of a construction loan is so that you can start building your home and that your general contractor will be able to take draws from the bank to pay sub-contractors. Which, isn’t necessarily a bad thing so long as you understand it all up front. However, you rely heavily on having a good general contractor, who will spend the money wisely. Otherwise, you could end up with a lien on your property. I digress…

We took the following first steps with Allen Edwin Homes:

• Met with Jeff, our sales counselor to discuss our needs and wants in a new home. Jeff was great in setting the expectations. He listened to us and suggested an awesome floor plan.

• We then met with our realtor. We are not first-time home buyers but we are first-time home builders. My husband and I felt very strongly that having adept representation was incredibly important. Our realtor has done a great job so far in explaining the build process and helping us go through our contracts. He has also been such a gem throughout this process so far.

• Once we gave the thumbs-up to Jeff with Allen Edwin to start, we met up with him again to choose our lot and put down a deposit. I had been doing a little research and found the “big sister floor plan” to the one we initially chose. My husband and I felt like that one was going to fit our family a little better. After that meeting, we picked out the floor plan, picked out our lot, and put down a deposit.  Woohoo! We are on our way!

• Over the next week or so, we signed initial contracts with Allen Edwin, our realtor and also MarketPlace Homes. During this time, we also met with our financial institution to get pre-approved for a mortgage. We chose one of Allen Edwin’s preferred lenders in hopes that the entire transaction would go smoothly.

• After the mortgage approval and contracts were signed, our Mortgage Approval Processor help set up our First and Final Home Selections. As you can imagine, this was the part I was the most excited for! Afterall, who doesn’t want to pick out flooring?!

We’re now just past our first and final home selections, I feel like that experience deserves its own post. So, stay tuned for my thoughts on Allen Edwin’s New Home Showroom!