It Starts.

We currently have a hold on a Ryan Home site Lot and are going back in two days to sign everything and start our journey.  It's funny, if you would've asked me 2 years ago if we would ever consider building a Ryan home, I would've laughed and told you that I definitely don't want to live in a "cookie cutter" home.  So, how did we get here?  Did we drink the koolaid?

Here's the cliff note version:

Should we look for a house?
Sure, can't hurt?
Wow, there's nothing out there.
Would we consider building a Ryan home?
Probably not, but it can't hurt to meet with them.
Wow, they're pretty nice homes. Let's look at lots.
This one seems like the best lot, should we put a hold on it? Sure.
Should we do this?  Is this where we want to live? Yes! No! Maybe.... No! Yes! No! Yes! ... back and forth
No, we do not want a Ryan home.
Look for house, look for house, look for house.
Three months later... Should we consider a Ryan home again?
Might as well, since we can't find anything else we like.
Are there any sites left that we like?  That one will do!  Put a hold on it!

Here's the Long Version:
In late March, my husband brought up the idea of looking for a house.  We just had our first child in November and are currently living in a three bedroom townhouse.  I love our townhouse and probably would've been happy to stay here another few years, so the idea of moving hadn't crossed my mind, but he mentioned it so I figured what could it hurt to just start looking?  We called our (amazing!) real estate agent and asked her to send us the multilist of houses for sale.  It was a little disappointing to say the least.  We then spoke with a mortgage guy to see if we could stretch our budget a little bit further, and he assured us we could.

The only problem was for the price range we really wanted, we would have to go in contingent on selling our house. In light of this new info, our real estate agent suggested we consider building a Ryan home.  We weren't exactly thrilled with this idea, but figured could it really hurt to just go talk to them?  We made an appointment and to talk with the sales rep.  The pricing didn't seem too ridiculous, but our biggest concern were the lot sizes and privacy. So, after a few meetings, we decided to walk the sites and actually found one that wasn't too bad. Sure, you're still close to your neighbor, but the back yard was pretty long.  We figured we'd go ahead and put a hold on the site, since we really had nothing to lose if we changed our mind.  For the next week we struggled with a decision.  Is this what we wanted?  Would we be happy here?  I'm pretty sure we changed our minds 3 times a day, every day for a week.  I would go to bed one night convinced we shouldn't proceed, then we would talk ourselves back into the next morning.  It was getting tiresome!  In the end, we decided that it wasn't REALLY what we wanted so we halted the process.

We then dove back into finding a house.  I scoured FSBO houses, the multilist, craigslist, etc.  Then it happened, we found a near perfect house on a beautiful plot of land.  It was flat, it was private, I fell in LOVE! We rushed to look at it the day after it came on the market and decided we would put an offer in that evening.  Our agent called and found out that there were three other offers in the works for the house, so we would have to put in a good offer.  We called our mortgage guy to double check that in this price range we would not need to go in contingent on selling our place (which he told us previously we wouldn't). Well, I'm not sure what changed,but we would've had to go in contingent on selling our house, so it wouldn't look good going up against three other offers, so we decided not to put an offer in.  I was crushed.  I really thought this was the house for us.

So, we continued to look for houses, but decided at this point that to get what we wanted, we would need to sell our place, so we decided to put it on the market.  It took a few days to get everything cleared out and cleaned up, but we got it listed and decided to list it high since we weren't in a rush to leave.  The first couple days it was on the market, we had no showings.  Finally, we had one showing but they wanted to put in a low offer and we basically told them to not bother since we weren't going to consider anything low, yet.  Then we had another showing and got an offer the same day.  We countered and she accepted our offer!  So, now we REALLY wanted to find a house since we need to be out of our townhouse at the end of August.

I'm not sure who mentioned it, me or the hubs, but the idea of building a Ryan home came back up again. I think my first impression was to laugh. After everything we went through a few months ago, are we REALLY going to bring up this topic again.  Then we started to take notice of other Ryan homes for sale in neighborhoods around us... and how QUICKLY they get resold.  Would it really be so horrible to live in a Ryan home?  We went to an open house one Sunday to look at an older Ryan home.  It wasn't much cheaper than we could build new and was much smaller.  So, I guess it came down to we might be sacrificing a yard to build, but we couldn't find a house that had a nice yard, anyway.  Is it our ideal situation?  No. Will we be happy here?  I think we will be.  I guess on days that I start to regret our decision, I can just go make some yummy comfort food in the huge kitchen and get over it quickly! :)

So, we went back to meet with Ryan homes again.  Unfortunately, prices have gone up a little and we couldn't get the kind of lot we were hoping for, but we're at least getting one with trees behind us, so we'll have a little bit of privacy.  Who knows, maybe we'll really like neighborhood living!  Neither of us grew up in big neighborhoods, so it will be a new experience for us and at least our little one will have lots of friends to play with!  So, we have a hold on a lot in a Ryan homes plan in the Pittsburgh North Hills area. We go back in two days to give them our hand money and sign some papers.

I've read several other blogs that people have written about their journey with Ryan homes and they have been really helpful in helping to make our decision to start this process, so I decided that I also wanted to document everything to share with others who were in our boat.  Plus, it gives me something to do in between taking care of an infant and playing candy crush :)