I thought I'd follow up from my in-depth townhouse discussion from 2 days ago. If you haven't read that below, you'll probably want to.
After the guy at the nice 180's townhouses told us to look into the Townes at Hunton Park (the townhouse community that's just starting to sprout right off Staples Mill Rd. (Rt. 33) and 295, we decided to drive over there and check it out. We're driving out Staples Mill and we get to a sign advertising new townhomes from the 140s. There was a long, newly-paved road leading back into the forest. If you know me, then you know that this is a good sign. So, we start driving down this long road. It's a 4-lane divided road, but only 1 side (2 lanes) are open right now. This tells me that this road is going to be pretty busy one day, and the engineers know it. So, we're driving, we're driving...dirt piles on the right...dirt piles on the left...and, we're at the end of the road. Yep, the road just ended in a big heaping pile of...dirt. Ohhhhkay...where's the townhouses? It became apparent to us that the townhouse community hadn't even started to sprout! There wasn't even a demo unit to look at! Talk about getting in on the ground floor.
So, it turns out that if you want to find out what one of these places looks like, you have to travel back down Staples Mill to the Ryan Homes townhome community where we first inquired. So, we ended up going in a complete circle.
We ended up talking to the same lady that we talked to on Sunday, and she even recognized us. So, we told her that we liked the more expensive place up near Innsbrook, but that it seemed a little out of our price range. So, we started taling about the new townhouse community down the road. She pulled out floor plans, options, add-ons, price sheets, etc. She also volunteered to go ahead and write up a little mock estimate to see what a monthly payment would be for a custom-configured house. You see, they don't begin work on your house until they know exactly what you want it to look like. Each family is allowed a certaim amount of customization as far as carpet, bathrooms, cabinets, etc. So, we went down through the options. Ceiling fans in the master bedroom and great room? Yes. Vaulted ceilings with a skylight in the master bedroom? Yes. Garden tub in the master bathroom? Yes. Wood floors in the foyer and dining room areas? Yes? So, when we were all done, the final house price came in just under $160,000, complete with all the fixin's. Not bad, except for one thing: these townhouses do NOT have a driveway and they do NOT have a garage. Those two things were a definite advantage that the other, more expensive, neighborhood offered. Bummer. So, she added in all of the taxes, fees, and -get this- if you through their mortgage company, they pay the closing costs on the house. So, after it was all calculated, a typical monthly payment would come in just a hair under $1000. Not too bad, considering that we're paying almost that in rent right now! Amazing.
So, we left their office with a fistfull of literature and stuff to look at, and completely overwhelmed. Perhaps tonight we'll head back to the expensive place and get the nice guy over there to do up a little estimate, too, just to compare.
