Day 1 - Our New Home · 5 May 09 by John

So, I asked myself this morning, “should I attempt to blog about the entire home building process?” I decided the answer is, “why not?” So… let’s get caught up to where we are. This is really “Day 2” but I’m going to call it Day 1 because I’m blogging about the events leading up to the signing of the contract.

We’ve chosen to build a Brady at The Landings in the Pinnacle subdivision in Grove City. We were moments away from walking away. More than once M/I Homes chose to quietly “not mention” things that most buyers would find objectionable… like a $1061 annual assessment on the property which is separate from the Home Owners’ Association dues and the property taxes. It was listed in its monthly form in one of a couple dozen lines in the “estimated monthly cost of ownership” form… but that was the only time it was even written down. And, no one bothered to mention it in our discussions about the home. Luckily, when they shoved 15 pages of documents to sign in front of us, we said, “OK, we’ll take these home and read them and get back with you.” I have to wonder what percentage of their buyers never notice that $1000/year until they’ve signed everything.

I made the appointments with the M/I Financial to see if they can beat our current loan offers. Thanks to AJ, we have really good credit and a little bit of a war chest and a good salary history which makes us a pretty attractive loan applicant. We also made our appointment with their design center where they’re going to try to sell us $20,000 worth of upgrades until I tell them that we’ll walk out the door if they try it.

They’re in the business of selling emotional content. Anyone can sell and build a house. To be profitable at it, you need some type of emotional content. I’m going in sans emotion… so let’s hope I can keep it that way and we can keep our money and they can keep their bidet!

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