Design Center

Gee, which color of beige should I choose? They're all so different.

Okay, for those of you who don't know, Dan and I just bought our first house. I feel really lucky to be able to say that. We have been looking for a really long time and decided that we would expand our search to an area where a lot of Dan's family lives. It's about 45 minutes north of here and in a lovely community called Lincoln on the I-80 side of Sacramento. We went out with Realtor  a couple of months ago and looked at a house that had a really nice floor plan, perfect size, in a cute neighborhood and more importantly-in our price range. We got home a a couple days later we were still thinking about this home. We contacted our Realtor for more information and later that day we found out that there were a couple of offers on it already and going for $30,000 to $40,000 more than the asking price. Oh well-right?! Not for Dan. He contacted the builder and found out that they were still building in that neighborhood and the model we looked at was very closed to our price range. So we decided to put in an offer $10,000 lower than asking price plus $8,000 toward closing costs. I really didn't think they would even consider this but about a day later they accepted the offer and before we knew it we were signing about 1000 papers on our first home.  

So...there is one problem. The sales guy has to sell one of the speck houses already built before they can start construction on our home. Seems a little weird-I know! What if this guy takes a year before he sells anything. But that was the deal and now we are waiting. Our house will take 18 weeks from start to finish so I hope this guy sells soon. 

The good thing when you buy a house like this is you get to pick out what you want, sort of. Marston, Darlene (my mother-in-law) and I went to the design center yesterday. I knew everything was going to be overpriced but I was floored when I got there and saw the price list. I thought "okay I know I won't be able to afford all the upgrades but I'm sure I could get 2 or 3 really nice things". Yeah right! For example, for the lowest upgraded wood floor they were asking $15 a sq. foot. I could get really nice hardwood flooring for $4 a sq. foot. Do they really think that people are that stupid. So I got to choose a few things that come standard and I think that it'll look okay until we can rip it out and put in our own stuff.