As I mentioned, we sold our Rome and decided to build another home; however, this time with Toll Brothers. The model is called the "The Langley 2" which gives us our must-haves I listed below. We realized a few weeks into our home that we settled for less than what we wanted in a "forever home" because we found ourselves still roaming the neighborhoods for new construction. There was so much more that we wanted/discovered after living in our current home. We would love a huge 7000 square foot home; but it's just three of us and the up keep would be too much than I choose to deal with. We were currently looking at three builders, NV Homes which is the luxury version of RH Homes, Caruso and Stanley Martin. Can I tell you how much I love Stanley Martin Homes which provide homesites on 1 and 2 acre lots...SWEET!! Well, again, we are not interested in keeping up that much property; nor paying the amount of premium for a lot that size. It was a tough decision because we spent nearly all of last year going back and forth on a NV Home that I fell in love with called the Remington II. Actually, we were approved last year 2014 with a ratified/approved contract for the Remington II and waited to build. The process of waiting for the lot to be available became a problem for us so we decided to hold off on our decision because of the many factors we had been working with since our daughter's passing. We paused and rescinded our contract. Any way, I love the Remington II and did not think there was another house that would give us what we wanted in terms of functionality and practicalilty. We wanted a beautiful home with some "wow factor" but something in the middle and the Remington II gave us the things on our must have list. Back in August 2015, we literally walked out of the NV Home 3-hour purchase agreement meeting to peek at the Toll Brothers home which we never considered, because we thought it would be out of our price range. The community we chose to build our new home has three models, different builders (Ryan Homes, NV Homes and Toll Brothers). We looked at the models which I had seen many times before; however, they closed the old model park and rebuilt the same model homes for the next phase of building. We decided since we were in the neighborhood we may as well peek at the new Toll Brothers model. We knew it was going to look fabulous because the old model that they are still waiting to sell took my breath away. We toured the Toll Brothers model and three days later, we canceled the contract with NV Homes on the house I loved and put in a purchase agreement on the Toll Brothers home that I have come to love even more than the Remington II....oops...did I just say that, yep! lol It was comparable in cost because it was the home site of the month that offered huge incentives and the biggest incentive was no premium lot fee. They had just opened up the new section and wanted to sell the last three lots quickly from last phase and this was our ticket. SCORE!
Here are the things we MUST-HAVE in our new home/community that our current home did not offer:
1. Manned Gated Community with 24 Security
2. An Elevation with more character
3. Three Car Side Load Garage
4. LOT with larger backyard for expansion (our previous lot had minimal feet in the backyard, most of the yard space was on the side that we could not expand on)
5. Large Luxury Landry Room in the basement
6. Large Mud Room (our mud room drove me crazy coming through the garage without seating)
7. Large Spa Bathroom with Roman shower (they offer the seamless frame shower..DWtimes2...yaaay)
8. Large Walk in Closet in the Mud Room (I absolutely love, love this feature)
9. Separate Storage Space in the Basement
10. Larger Morning Room (we chose the octagon morning room called the Naples, nice twist)
11. Princess Suite for our granddaughter to include her own bathroom and walk-in closet
12. Two story foyer
13. Two story great/family room
Extra Perks:
1. Golf Course On-Site and nearby Equestrian Center
2. Master Bedroom comes with a Sitting Area (we are adding a three sided fireplace in this location)
3. Tray Ceilings and crown molding are standard features
4. Desk area in the kitchen (yaaay...always wanted a designated space in the kitchen)
5. Restaurant On-Site
6. Larger Community Room (our past community room was very, very small and still do not understand why they built such a small space for over thousands of homes in the community) The space was so small that I had to throw my 50 birthday party in our home which accommodated all of our guess comfortably)
Our biggest compromise to date: (Whewwww.....
We are not going to finish the basement this time around.
