Buying From Afar

I've had this blog in suspended animation for a few months, because we have been in California while working through negotiations, and I didn't want to advertise about buying this home if the deal fell through for any reason. It seemed like a daunting and near impossible task to purchase a new construction home while living on the opposite side of the country, but to their credit, NVH sales team is awesome, professional, and seems to have some knowledge on how to do this seamlessly, without causing stress to their buyers.

Here's a quick breakdown of how it went.

Step 1: We scheduled a house hunting trip in March. The family came (myself, my husband and our son. Our daughter is a freshman in college and no longer lives at home) because we wanted to make sure everyone had some input in what they wanted in a new home. We stayed a week and spent every day trekking from model home to model home, open house to open house, before we finally narrowed down five home communities. Once we got back to California, we submitted our offers (basically, things we wanted included in the sale, etc) and worked out a contract with NVHomes in the Villages of Urbana. We didn't use a real estate agent because honestly, we were looking everywhere from Frederick to Northern Virginia, and also DC, and we just didn't want someone gearing us to a certain neighborhood or state. We didn't use an agent when we purchased our first house and we feel like we came out fine, but I would definitely suggest getting a real estate lawyer to look over your purchase contract if you feel like you aren't really grasping what you are about to sign. We also have to find our own inspector, which is a bit of a pain--a real estate agent would come with recommendations like that.

Step 2: Once the offer was submitted/accepted, NVH expressed mailed every single document we needed to fill out, and also paid for express overnight shipping. Documents that could just be emailed and signed, they sent those too. Honestly, I liked this route better than going into the office every single time something needed to be signed. We were able to read over the documents at our own leisure, and call or email them anytime we came across a page or charge that we didn't understand. But for the most part, these are standard home buying contracts, and there shouldn't be many--if any--surprises there. Housing deposit is also paid at this time.

Step 3: Our credit is pretty good and we are second time homebuyers, so NVH offered us an extremely competitive rate, one that our bank (USAA) wasn't able to match. We also had a couple of loaning programs to choose from, including using my husband's VA Loan, and since my husband is  a doctor, the Physician's Loan. Both are zero down programs. The VA Loan has a funding fee, but lower overall interest rates, while the Physician's Loan has no funding fee, but higher interest rates. We do plan to use a downpayment, so we will decide which program we want to go with when we're closer to locking in a rate permanently.

Step 4: Most appointments can be done over the phone. Trinity Wiring contacted us and sent us a bunch of paperwork of our floorplan, pricing information, and a date for a phone appointment for picking out our options. We did have to watch YouTube videos and scour pictures of the model home to make sure we had the location of the wiring correct, but it was no big deal.

Step 4: Cabinetry and countertops needed to be chosen before the foundation was poured, but flooring and other options can wait until later. Luckily for me, I'd already known exactly what kind of cabinets and countertops we wanted in the home, so that was easy enough to set up through the design center, through email. They were very helpful, they sent us pics and brochures of the cabinets, and also gave us enough information that we could go and look at some of our options in local design centers and warehouses.

Step 5: We were contacted by our mortgage processor (different than our loan officer. I actually haven't figured out the difference in the two positions, but I suppose it doesn't really matter) who requested some additional documents. (For example, we have our college aged daughter listed on one of our checking accounts, and she needed to sign off that we are allowed to make transactions on that account. Silly because that is our account that we set up for her, but every box must be marked, every dollar accounted for.)

Step 6: We were emailed a loan approval letter. Yay!

Step 7: Foundation poured, plumbing is installed, and we're now getting weekly updates, along with pictures from our sales rep.

Step 8: We've been in MD for almost two weeks, and we've already had our meeting with our sales rep, making last minute changes pre-drywall, and also had our meeting with the design center (more on that in the next post.)

So far, our experience has been easy and as long as you know what you want in a house and aren't dead set on documenting or watching every step of the experience, it is very much possible to purchase a house long distance.