New Townhouse owner

I'm new and just bought a town house in broadlands south.
I'm concerned reading about Van Metre experiences.

http://hoa.broadlands.org/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1803

This should be exciting but have so much to deal with:
1) Use the builder's lender due to the incentives?
2) Is Corian countertop really worth upgrading for resale value for a townhouse? We may or may not move in 5-10 years. We see this as a primary residence, but also an investment. But then again, in 5 years, everything might be even more expensive, so we may have no place to live.
Are kitchen countertops really hard to do yourself?
3) Does anyone else live in a Barrinton townhouse (or Broadmoor, Kentwood, or Cambridge all of which are in the Foxhall collection of townhouses)? Do you have the whole house shake due to the washer & dryer? (I saw this on another posting)

4)We're already overbudget due to the bump out extension on all 3 levels of the townhouse. So wondering about the rough-ins for ceiling fans? and upgrading floor or wall tiles for masterbath.

5) what are the most essential upgrades for a middle size model of a TH (townhouse) if we're already overbudget due to the bump out.

I know we should not have gone over budget, but we already got in and couldn't get ourselves to overbid on a resale TH.

Any thoughts?

 

Here's the best tips I can give you when purchasing a house. Some people might disagree but these are always where I start.

1. Start with structural. You can always add things like countertops later. Its not so easy to add a bump out. You want to maximize the square feet so that should be your first goal. You'll also want to maximize window options if they give them. Also look here for some external items. Things like attic fans (helps out a lot in summer with the upstairs temp), brick fronts/water tables, stone, etc can be very nice for resale.

2. Next is wiring options. You'll want to make sure that each bedroom has a telephone, tv jack, and possibly cat 5 jack. This will be important in the future for resale. You'll also want to make sure each bedroom has a ceiling fan prewire. It's nice to have the family room pre wired for surround sound and also give it a ceiling fan. The main reason is that once the drywall is up it becomes very difficult to add these things. Some of these things you might be able to do yourself if the builder allows you to do it. It's not hard to run cat 5 and speaker wire. Also look to see if there are any lighting options here that you like. It can be a pain to mount lighting later on if you don't do it now.

Once those options are complete I would see how much money is left over that you want to roll into your mortgage and start upgrading things like the applicances, upgrading that elevation outside, getting that basement finished if they don't offer that, adding in that extra bathroom.

I've had 2 homes built now and from my experience that's the best advice I can give you.

A few more tips:
1. Builder grade paint is almost always horrible. Don't pay the builder to custom paint your home.
2. Builder grade carpet is bad. Upgrade to at least level 2 padding so you can have a few years out of the carpet but you will be replacing it no matter which grade you get.

Hope that helps. I can go on all day but those are the important ones off the top of my head. Cosmetic things you can always do later for a cheaper cost with much more flexibility. Tile work, wood floors, counter tops, etc, etc. Unless you have spare money I'd just take the base options and upgrade those to your liking as you go along.

Eric

 

Thank you for being the 1st to reply =) So many people have read the posting.

Do you live in a Townhouse? Does your home shake when the washer is running?

 

We moved from a town home to a SF home. In the town home the washer/dryer was on the basement level so we didn't have a problem with that. In our SF home we do have some movement in the laundry room. I plan on putting down tile myself to fix the problem. It's the standard linoleum currently.

In our townhome I chose pretty much the basics. Made sure I maximized the square footage. Made sure that there was all needed wiring thru the house. Other than that I upgraded a few applicances, upgraded the carpet padding and that was pretty much it. Got a great return on investment. People do like to see the upgrades when they go to buy a home but if you are strapped for cash then it's best to get the things that can't easily be replaced done first and upgrade the easy stuff later as you have money.

That's my opinion anyway.

Good luck

 

I would definitely upgrade the carpet padding to the highest level. It makes a big difference even if you have the bottom of the rung carpet. Also, upgraded carpet is not always better. In our last home we got the highest upgrade of berber and it was junk. So hard to clean and not comfy on the footsies at all.

I agree about wiring & such in each bedroom. That can be a big pain to add after the fact what with putting holes in the walls and all. The bumpout is a definite must for a townhouse, it makes a huge difference in size and resale.

I don't live in the Foxhall collection but my washer/dryer are on the 3rd floor & I sometimes feel a minor shake in my bedroom but not throughout the house.

Good luck!

 

I don't know much about resale, but it seems to me the market will have to slow down A LOT to make resale a big issue.

We figured the incentives made it about even with other lenders, and it makes it easier at closing. But Intercoastal (I assume they are still the lender) is just a broker, so expect one or more changes in your mortgage company in the first year. (Ours got sold twice in 3 months, and the second time they messed up the balance, but that is another thread...)

As far as I know, there are no options for VM to custom paint, so that is not an issue. I am very glad we upgraded a lot of the carpet; the standard carpet we have is yucky.

Good advice on the wiring; you may want to check what exactly a ceiling fan rough-in consists of. We got a ceiling fan in the Master BR and a rough-in in another BR. The $400 for the fan was a rip off, and there is only a single switch for both (we still have to check if there are separate wires run for the fan and light).

I believe you will be dealing with OpenBand for the phone/cable/cat5 wiring. You will have options about how many "multimedia" drops you want (each drop has 4 hookups - for phone, cable, internet and cctv(or whatever you want to run on it). Openband also ran speakers for us. We went a bit overboard, but it is much easier to do now than later. We weren't brave enough to try to convince them to let us run our own wiring; it would probably require a hard fight or a bit of sneakiness.

OT: L0stS0ul - We got the upgrade to tile in our SF first floor laundry room (Sinclair), and the house still shakes when the washer spins. I can even feel the family room floor shake when my 5-lb bunnies run their laps around the room. I wonder if there is some sort of structural fix we can do in the unfinished basement to fix this? Meanwhile, a few corkboard squares underneath the washer helped some.


Pam D.

 

I agree that the structural and behind the drywall options are the most important -- the rest can be added later. The carpet padding will make ANY carpet last longer. Also consider "neutral". Corian is a plus for reasale, but not if it's a weird color.

Some of the folks on the forum are frustrated, and this is a place to vent. The ones who are happy don't tend to post that they are happy.

But there are lessons to learn:
1) Hire an inspector for pre-drywall, for walkthrough and for the 1 year, and, in retrospect, I'd hire different inspectors for each to get multiple opinions.
2) Ride herd on the builder. They have so much business they won't fix things unless you're the squeaky wheel.
3) ENJOY your new home. Nothing is perfect. Much is enjoyable.

 

I agree with Zansu, Hire an inspector for the pre-drywall. Most important. They can find any structural issues that you might have with the house. Also the week of the pre-drywall walkthru check on the house a lot and make sure that the items that you found have been fixed. Take a camera and get pictures. That saved us when we found that none of our pre-drywall items were fixed before the drywall went up. It was very hard for VM to argue with pictures.

That lends to another thing. Take pictures of everything thru the building process. You never know when you need to know where that odd stud was or that wierd thing here or that there. Pictures can save you a lot of frustration. Home movies are also funny to watch. I always get a laugh outta watching my wife and I walk thru the house as it was being built

 

I most definitely agree on insuring that each room has at least one CAT5 drop for network connections.

We had drops installed in the bedrooms and the kitchen. When we finish the basement, we'll have extra drops in there.

Don't let people tell you that its not needed, and you can go wireless. In a townhouse, wireless can either work well, or not at all. With wired Cat5 (or Cat 6), its a no brainer. You plug in, it works and a lot faster than wireless.

I've had a client with wireless where the router is on the second floor, one computer works well on the third floor, but the computer on the first floor had major conneciton problems. We tried everything, turns out that there was structual steel in the way, and that brought down the signal.
We finally went with Ethernet over powerline adapters.

Spend the extra, put in the Ethernet, it will help on resale, even if it only means that of 2 townhouses on the market, your's has it, the other doesn't.

If you can, cancel the bumpout ... and put more in the interior. Add the fan rough-ins, go for wireing in the family room for the surround sound now. Install the alarm system, go for upgraded flooring and pads.




Neil Z.
Resident since 1999

 

Thank you to everyone. Any one have suggestions for home inspectors? How much do they usually cost?

Has anyone used a contractor (independent, Lowes, or Home Depot) to install countertops after moving into their new townhouse or SF home? About how much

I don't know what the measurements for our kitchen countertops. Are there ways to make a townhouse look more spacious w/ colors? like vinyl kitchen floor and cabinets.

We have 5 multimedia taps. I've rescheduled the design center appointment, and only have an email from the VM TH sales manager that says that I don't have to sign anything else (regarding the line item in the contract that says I have to have my selections done by a certain date) because once they have me come and sign, the I will have already selected everything. Is an email sufficient proof from the sales manager? Plus the design center called me to confirm the rescheduled appointment.

 

Inspectors for townhomes can be anywhere from $300-600. A note about using them, Van Metre won't cooperate with an inspector. If you have one and they find something, you'll have to tell VM yourself, they won't accept the inspectors' paperwork or findings.

 

I assume from some of your post you are not working with a realtor. We bought our townhome without the assistance of a realtor and had a lot of the same questions you do. In the future take a realtor with you when you look at new homes. The builder has to pay them when you close and they don't share this information with you because that is more profit for them. Which around here is quite a chunk. The builder already has the cost of a realtor built into their price. The builder will not give you a discount because you are doing it yourself. The only caveat is the realtor must be with you the first time you look at the Sales Office and some places will make them register.

By the way when we bought new constuction we did upgrades that would help with resale and would be hard to do yourself (hardwood floors, upgraded cabinets, upgraded appliances, extra full bath). We did not select any upgrades for light fixtures, bath fixtures, carpet (only upgraded the pad we have a small child and dogs so we figured it would need to be changed in a couple of years anyway), deck, garage door opener. I happen to have a very handy husband and we have selected what we wanted and have made the changes ourselves. Also, for the deck what the builder wanted to charge we were able to add a deck to our house with higher quality wood for slightly more.

Good Luck!

clwjl5

 

Generally the way it works is the inspector registers with van metre so they know that you are working with an inspector. Then you get the list of items from the inspector and you place them on the standard VM checklist sheet. VM is pretty good about dealing with home inspectors. It's not that they don't work with the inspectors its just that they don't use the inspectors paperwork. VM is very used to their own paperwork and you will have to transfer any issues over to VM's format. VM Fixed every item our inspector found.

If you are looking for a home inspector try Bob Banker with Eagle Inspections. We used him to inspect our home. He's very good.

Bob Banker
Phone: 540-272-0382
bob@eagleinspect.com
http://www.eagleinspect.com/

I'd look around probably $200-$300 for the pre-drywall inspection and $300-$400 for the final inspection. It's very worth it to have that piece of mind.

 

Same experience .. If you transfer your inspectors note to VM's form, they are very very good about addressing most of your issues ( one was not addressed due to weather .. ground was frozen ..so they addressed it next Spring as promised ) ... Each supervisors have a financial incentive from VM to complete all the check list before your settlement ... We had pre drywall and final inspection done for our SH.. ( After reading all the posting prior to us buying from VM, I was worried .. but We are very happy with VM ... Good luck with your house ..and welcome to Broadlands !! )

 

Dont get any extras! At the current pace, in 5-10 years a bare-bones SHACK might still sell for $800-900K in Broadlands.

 

Hi everyone =) Thank you for all your help.
Has anyone used a contractor (independent, Lowes, or Home Depot) to install countertops after moving into their new townhouse or SF home? About how much? Has anyone done interior work themselves? If so, what are some easier interior upgrades to do.
Pam: Oh my, so did you know where to send your check when your mortgage was sold? We're 1st time home buyers. Can mortgage be paid w/ a credit card? Then we pay off the balance right away. I like to get the incentive from credit cards with rewards and all expenses are broken down on the credit card. (okay, if this is a silly question please chuckle =))

We did work with a realtor, but she's fairly new at all this too. She primarily does condos, not SF or TH. So she doesn't know any home inspectors. We have to have the bump out. The lot was already sited. I'm concerned, since were the last few in the subdivision. They won't be building our model any more. They're working on new models now for the next release, so we won't see as much appreciation.

 

Countertops are the easiest thing to install...they just screw from underneath. If you can get someone to cut/deliver them...do it yourself.

 

Why are the washers/dryers shaking the houses? Our washer/dryer is suppose to be on the 3rd floor. What can remedy this? What does VM say about this? Can they help? Do you install the washer/dryer by yourselves? Or someone does it for you? Who? 've never bought a washer/dryer before.
I can't imagine that the houses are so expensive and this happens.

 

I don't think you should lose sleep over the vibration issue. Our W/D is on the 2nd floor of our SFH, and, at times (depending on the weight of the load), we can feel the vibration throughout the 2nd floor during the spin cycles.

I think proper balancing can help. Also, if you are truly concerned about it you might want to avoid front-load washers. I have heard that front-load washers, because of their design, can spin at much faster speeds than top-load washers. The higher speeds can increase the vibration effects.

We love our front-load, though, and the vibration is not really that big a deal to us.

 

Basically the weight and speed cause the floor to shake. There are things you can do to stiffen the floor below but generally the vibration won't do much other than annoy you. As I said I'm going to install 12 inch tile eventually in the laundry room. You have to put down a sub floor before the tile so that should stiffen it up a lot. It won't get rid of the shake but it will lessen it

When you purchase the washer and dryer they come deliver and install it for you. Sears, best buy, costco, they all do it. So all you have to do is buy the washer and dryer.

I believe there are even washers out there that are designed to minimize the floor shake. I actually thought about moving our washer and dryer to the basement. Basically Concrete is the only thing that won't flex

Best of luck to you.