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I have a design center appointment for our home built by Ryland Homes next week. This is our second home purchase, but first time using Ryland and first time building one from scratch. We are being extremely cautious in each step and our guard has been up in every stage of the process. But this is a critical moment and I would like to hear from people who have been through this process with Ryland's design center.
We are looking to upgrade Cabinets (dark colors), granite, tiles, prewires, carpet padding and depending on the $$ left on our incentives ($15K) some more.
1. Can someone tell me if the markups are really high on their offerings?
2. Are their wooden floors priced reasonably?
3. Any word of caution on any specific areas I shouldnt be considering going through the builder?
Yes. Generally, markups are 15% or so more than you would pay via your own contractor. However, try negotiating on the all in cost they quote for the upgrades before you decide. We got ours (Perry) knocked in half ($25K in sticker price upgrades, paid $12.5K). It's all negotiable.
Secondly, be prepared to pay 1/2 down on the spot as soon as you place the final order. At least that's what Perry required.
No experience with Ryland, but I just recently went through the process with another builder.
The biggest advice I can give is to take pictures of EVERYTHING that you choose at the design center. Lay it all out, and take pictures. Then after your home is framed and drywalled, print those pictures and go tape them up inside the house so there should be no doubt about what is getting installed.
I had several instances (mostly with flooring), where the wrong material was being installed, had to be torn out and redone. Putting the pictures up will avoid any confusion.
As far as upgrades go...
It's difficult to establish a cost for most true "upgrades" because you don't know the value of the standard product. Focus on things that are additions, not upgrades of existing features. For example, my house did not include blinds, so adding those was an obvious choice because it's an addition to the house that wasn't there before. Your house will already include carpet, no matter what. Making that carpet nicer provides only a marginal return on investment.
I have a design center appointment for our home built by Ryland Homes next week. This is our second home purchase, but first time using Ryland and first time building one from scratch. We are being extremely cautious in each step and our guard has been up in every stage of the process. But this is a critical moment and I would like to hear from people who have been through this process with Ryland's design center.
We are looking to upgrade Cabinets (dark colors), granite, tiles, prewires, carpet padding and depending on the $$ left on our incentives ($15K) some more.
1. Can someone tell me if the markups are really high on their offerings?
2. Are their wooden floors priced reasonably?
3. Any word of caution on any specific areas I shouldnt be considering going through the builder?
Thanks
Forums
The markups for all builders on options are high. There's not much getting around this. The markup on wooden floors is especially high. My advice would be that if you want to get your money's worth and are interested in possibly upgrading things once the house is completed and saving money, that you want to focus on the options that aren't easily replaceable once the house it built. This includes structural elements, prewires, preplumbs, etc. For instance, you can save a lot of money by taking the builder carpet and then ripping it out once you close on the house and having it replaced with hardwood floors. The same could possibly be said for light fixtures, door knobs, cabinet pulls, mirrors, crown moulding - all things easily changed/added once the home is built. And depending upon your budget, you could do them over time. Focus on the big things at the design center - cabinets, granite, structural elements, rounded sheetrock, prewire/preplumb, doors, etc. This will probably easily eat up most of your incentive money.
There are many other small places where you could potentially save money by doing it yourself, but you need to factor in the hassle of managing that. These include garage door openers, sprinkler systems, landscaping, etc. If you're interested in a water softener, have the builder pre-plumb for one, but buy it yourself after you close. You'll have to factor in your budget as well. If you do it through the builder, then you can roll it into your mortgage. If you do it yourself, then you'll be paying out of pocket at that time.
Yup, half down.
We're doing the same with Trendmaker. This week is our second appt.
Can these places have any standard colors other than freakin brown????
I couldn't even pick white paint! Had to ask them to paint the ceiling color on the walls, just to get something close to white.
The best thing is to negotiate your upgrades into the cost of the house, but unfortunately you are passed that. We got around $35k in upgrades on a $340k house. Upgraded wood floor all downstairs, premium coldesac lot, 3 car garage, outdoor kitchen, blinds, ss fridge, sprinkler system, upgraded elevation.
Now we just need to upgrade a few smaller items like kitchen countertop or bathroom tile.
As an example from my options list, the upgraded floor we got (level E) sells for $5.95 sq ft. Kind of expensive considering there is a base floor cost already in the price of the home.
If you're interested in a water softener, have the builder pre-plumb for one, but buy it yourself after you close.
Can you explain what this pre-plumb is?
Our current house was built in 1960 and we added a Hague Watermax softener a few years back. Didn't seem like a big deal for the installer. Its outside though. Is that the difference? Looks like they want to put the water softener in the new house in the garage. Our current one cost us $2700. Trendmaker wants just under $3k for the new one which looks pretty nice and that includes an upgraded RO unit under the sink in the kitchen.
Can you explain what this pre-plumb is?
Our current house was built in 1960 and we added a Hague Watermax softener a few years back. Didn't seem like a big deal for the installer. Its outside though. Is that the difference? Looks like they want to put the water softener in the new house in the garage. Our current one cost us $2700. Trendmaker wants just under $3k for the new one which looks pretty nice and that includes an upgraded RO unit under the sink in the kitchen.
For a preplumb the will run pipe to a specified location and cap it. This could be water such as for a sink or water softener, or gas such as for an outdoor grill. In the case of a water softener, they'd pobably run it out to the garage, which makes the water softener install much easier and cheaper - you just have to hook it up to the existing pipe. If you can find out the model of water softener Trendmaker is going to install, I would bet that you could get it installed for about half the amount they are quoting yourself.
If you are planning to install water softner/RO later, make sure that there is pre-plumbing between the sink and refrigerator, This is more important if there is a walkway between the location of sink and refrigerator.
Everyone here has great advise. Sorry this will be long....
We built our Ryland home 2 years ago - the Cantata floorplan (closed a week before Christmas). The building process was fantastic. There were some issues that came up - but our contractor was awesome and on top of it. He got a very nice Holiday gift card from us when all was said and done.
The design center was a NIGHTMARE with Ryland. This was our second home built from scratch, so we weren't really newbies. We took pictures of EVERYTHING (several in fact).
The problem we had was the sales rep we worked with. She was either new, or didn't give a ***** about her job or something. Even our real estate agent (who was with us) said that what she was doing wasn't normal. She would leave for LONG periods of time, was taking forever, making mistakes, etc.
My husband and I went to the design center about a week before our appt. to look around. This is allowed, but you won't be helped by anyone - you are on your own, can't ask questions, etc. We did this to get a feel for their materials, and start thinking about color schemes, etc. So we got a really good idea of what we wanted before our appt.
Appt day comes. We have a meeting time of noon. I kid you not - we did not leave that design center until after 6pm!! That's because our sales rep person would leave us alone for like 30 minutes-1 hour several times, and we couldn't find her!! We finally made our choices and left.
My husband is an engineer, and loves spreadsheets. So he meticulously charted EVERYTHING we picked out. We had decided to pick out everything we wanted, and then scale back as necessary for the budget. So when we started scaling down - he made the appropriate adjustments on our spreadsheet, and would compare them with the sales rep spreadsheet. And she would get most of it WRONG. Like big things - changing the granite countertops we wanted, etc.
It got to the point that we almost walked from the house. We made it up the chain to the VP of the company actually. Because of my husband's spreadsheets, we had proof of her incompetence. And in the end they gave us more in incentives, and we ended up dealing with the sales rep's boss instead and things went MUCH MUCH better after that.
She also neglected to tell us that we had a second appt where you finalize everything you picked out. We found that out later! Grrrr.
We did go back to the design center on our own a couple of more times between that first appt and our final appt to make changes, etc.
We spent most of our $$$ on upgrading the wiring, and wiring our house. We didn't do that on our first house, and wired it afterwards. VERY worth the money to do this during the building process. We added a surround sound system to the game room (we turned it into the media room). We added fans to the back porch, and wired it for suround sound and a tv. We wired the master bathroom for a ceiling fan, and the art niche in the master bath for a tv. We added some outlets around the outside of the house, and some other things I can't remember right now.
We upgraded the wood (wood came standard in the study and dining rooms). We had a leak in our master bathroom closet that leaked into the study under the floors. Half the study floor had to be ripped up and redone 6 months after moving in. They were on top of it, and it was done beautifully - you would never know.
We did NOT upgrade the carpet. We have small children and decided to let the carpet be while they are small...and we will either upgrade or get all wood floors once they are older. We did upgrade the carpet pad though.
One of our free upgrades was 18" tile through out the house (minus the bedrooms). And we upgraded the tile to one we liked (level 3 I think). We only have carpet in our bedrooms and media room.
We went with the gourmet kitchen cabinets and do NOT regret that decision at all. LOVE them. And it would cost a lot more $$ later to redo them. You get stuff like a built in spice cabinet, built in trash, etc.
We upgraded the bathroom cabints a level or 2 and put granite countertops in the bathrooms.
I love our home. And after living here for 2 years, I can honestly tell you that there isn't much that bugs me about our house, or that I wish we had done differently. There are 2 kitchen cabinets that I wished opened the opposite direction - but I can change that! That's IT!!
My husband and I really looked at our floorplan, and seriously thought about how we would use the rooms, how we would set each room up, and that's how we decided on where to put outlets, etc.
Just make sure you get a good building contractor - that's the person who can make or break your home. We changed a few things on our floorplan, and he had to make sure they were done because it went "against" the original floorplan, and the builders (the ones actually building the house) didn't like that. And some things had to be redone to our specifications because they literally went against OUR plans, and stuck with the *original* floorplans. And it was expensive stuff...like redoing some cabinetry.
I would go with Ryland again in a heartbeat though. Good Luck!
ETA: We did not install a water softener system because our water comes from Lake Houston. If it came from anywhere else, then I probably would have. They water softener guy asked where we lived, and when we told him the Humble/Kingwood area, he said that most people in our area don't need it because of the Lake Water. But everywhere else in Houston usually needs it.
Have to say, we love our "Cantata" model as well! Got a load of upgrades, most were included as part of an incentive back in 2008. The one thing I absolutely love is the Moen Stone Sink. It's huge, and beautiful and I am so glad we got it. We also chose Silestone over Granite. And laid the 18" tile at an angle . . . makes a big difference.
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