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Good afternoon! I have several questions and if they have already been answered, I apologize in advance.
My husband (64) and I (56) have been coming down to Myrtle for a few years after researching as a good location for retirement. Our research led us here for numerous reasons. Ocean, beach, tax friendly for retirees, activities if we want, or if we don't, health care, proximity to airports, new housing costs. I have never had a new home so that is number 1 on my list. After several visits, we have narrowed down to possibly a few builders and models. Right now, we really like RS Parker Homes. 2nd is Native Home Builders. 3rd is Flagship and possibly 4th is DR Horton. Can anyone provide details, good or bad? Or Should I pose that as 4 different posts to keep all opinions in one thread? Are there other possible builders that provide a quality build at a reasonable cost? I'm looking at 1800-2200 3BR 2BA 1 level, 2 car garage, less than $250K in a community with a pool, reasonable HOA. Thanks for your help!
You will find that different people have different opinions and experience with each of these builders. We looked at houses or have had friends who had houses built by all of these builders except Native Home Builders so I can't give an opinion on them. Here's what our or our friend's experiences have been. RS Parker--friends had a house built by them and, overall, it was good quality. Their prices tend to be higher than others and I don't think their quality is high enough to demand the higher prices though. Flagship is actually run by the brother of one of the owners of RS Parker and their quality is similar to RS Parker and prices are more in line with the quality that they deliver. Both Parker and Flagship are local companies so I think they take better care of their customers or least you can get to the head of the company easier than other regional/national builders. Parker and Flagship will make any changes you want to the floorplans, add a covered porch, lengthen the garage, etc. DR Horton is a national builder and also produces pretty good quality. My biggest problem with them was that they were locked into their floor plans and options. If it wasn't on their options list, they wouldn't even talk to you about doing it. For example, one house we looked at had an island and we wanted to raise one end of it to create a bar...they said that they couldn't do it and wouldn't even consider pricing it out for us. We also wanted to add a covered/screened porch...same answer...not on their options list, they wouldn't discuss it.
As far as other builders, most are competitive with each other. The primary driving cost difference is the size and location of the house...the closer to the ocean, the higher the price...the bigger the lot, the higher the price....the more amenities in the community, the higher the price.
I would think that you should not have any problem finding a house the size that you want in the price range you want...there are lots of communities that offer housing, etc. in that price range. What part of the MB area are you interested in?
Also, don't rule out a newer already built house. You can sometimes get a better deal for something like that and you will be aware of the true cost of the HOA, etc. For example, Flagship is famous for setting the HOA dues unrealistically low while they are building out a community which helps attract buyers. But, when the community actually takes over the operation of the HOA, they find that they have to raise the dues because Flagship has subsidized the HOA during construction (during which time they alone run it) but the subsidies end when they build the last house. With an existing newer house, the HOA dues will have stabilized and you can find out if there are any problems as well.
Thanks so much for this info, it is very helpful :-) We are looking to be on the west side of the waterway. We mainly have looked in the Forestbrook area, Southern Myrtle near Surfside, a couple of RS Parkers off of 501 - Hillside and Brookberry. We absolutely LOVE one of the RS Parker models and it can vary by almost $50,000 base price from Conway to Longs. We haven't really scoped out too far north.
You might want to ask people that live in the neighborhood about Brookberry. Certain parts of Carolina Forest have some water issues when we get a tropical storm like we had this past weekend. I don't know if Brookberry is one of the problem areas so ask the people who live there.
Hillsborough in Conway is very nice...we looked there before we built. But it was a little too far to the beach for what we wanted. If they ever finish International Drive, it will be an easier drive to the beach but in the meantime, it's congested especially in the summer.
We live in Forestbrook so we're familiar with that area. Have you checked out Forestbrook Preserve (Flagship Construction)? It's pretty large but the houses look nice. For existing houses, you should check out Arrowhead. The houses are about 15 years old but the community is very nice (we lived there when we rented when we first moved here). It has a large community pool, tennis courts and a playground and the HOA dues are less than $50/month. It also has a newer section called Arrowhead Grande that has a few new houses in it in your price range and most of them are built by RS Parker. One of our friends lives there and really likes it. Another nice community with newer houses in Forestbrook is Forestbrook Reserve. It's completely built out but there are a few houses for sale there. Flagship built most of the houses there.
Thanks, we will check on that with Brookberry. Hillsborough does have the model that we like, and yes, a tad far from the beach, but we could deal with that. We have looked at a few of the communities Flagship has done and looked at Preserve when it was just started, haven't been back since they have expanded. We are here this week, so maybe we will drive up that way. I will look at Arrowhead Grande as well, thank you. I really would like new if at all possible. Flagship does have a model we like as well and I know they will work with us on some things if we want to change anything around.
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