Why we chose NVHomes ...

It was a bit scary for us to go with a new construction home again, and even though our last home turned out to be a good choice, we really weren't looking to repeat the experience. When we found out we would be moving to the DC metro area, we had our sights set on finding an older home in an established area with good schools, low crime, and centrally located to shopping, theaters, and restaurants.

We aren't millionaires, so our hopes were quickly dashed.

We found a few older homes that we liked, but in our price range, they required some major work, and I just didn't find any neighborhoods that I loved and would be willing to be part of for the next seven years. Or maybe even longer.

When we lived in the area before, while my husband was in med school, we lived in a sleepy little town called Damascus MD. We rented a new construction townhouse, and it was a very happy and content 4 years for us. The townhouse was ... crap. Sorry, but it was. Just flimsy, poorly constructed, poorly designed, and way overpriced. Remember, we moved into this house in 2004, smack dab in the middle of the housing boom, when builders couldn't throw the houses together fast enough for an insane profit. I'm glad that we were only renters and not homebuyers because between the shoddy construction and the housing crash ... well, we would have been screwed.

While Damascus was a great area for that stage of our life, the slowness, the lack of ... well anything, and having to drive everywhere anytime I wanted something, was not what I wanted in a community at this point. Great for young families, but not so much for a late 30s couple with one college aged kid who lives at home less than part time, and a teenage boy. So we checked out other locations.

NVHomes has a heavy presence in most new home communities, and we looked everywhere from Frederick to Gaithersburg, from Maple Lawn (Fulton) to Prince George's County. There was just something about the NVHomes townhouses that spoke to us, and we found ourselves comparing every single house we looked at to the NVHomes models. We ultimately decided on the Frederick/Urbana area because the neighborhood met most of our criteria:

1. Good schools--we have an autistic kid, there was no negotiating on this. Frederick has excellent schools.

2. Close to restaurants, shopping, theaters, parks, and honestly, I saw the Urbana library and my mind was already made up, case closed. BEAUTIFUL library.

3. Price. Depending on the locations, the same NVHomes could vary upwards of $100k. Of course, the more desirable the area, the more expensive the home will be. We decided that living 15 minutes closer to my husband's job was not worth a $100k premium,

It's not all that close to DC (about 40 miles) and there's no metro station for around 20 miles (MARC station is within walking distance though), so that was the one thing we compromised on. Luckily, my husband works some pretty unconventional hours, so most of the time, his commute will be no more than 30-35 minutes. 45 minutes on a bad day. We are Californians, so we are not at all allergic to half hour commutes.

I like Frederick because it is a charming and thriving town, completely independent of DC, with its own vibe, culture, and identity. We would have loved to live in the booming downtown area of Frederick, but that's when the commute would have started to get uncomfortable for us, so we focused on the Urbana area, which is close to both Frederick proper AND Montgomery County. Urbana is newer, younger, and a bit more diverse than other parts of Frederick, and the home values seem to hold steady, so this was a nice compromise for us.

So why did we choose NVHomes? Having visited dozens and dozens of model homes across the DC Metro area, we just found NVH to have a premium and high end quality that we found lacking in other homes. The John Jacob Astor (the model we chose), the Andrew Carnegie, and the Vanderbilt, seemed thoughtfully designed, like they really took note of what buyers are looking for and applied it when designing the home. The massive islands that span the length of the kitchen, no choppy, awkwardly placed rooms, main level powder rooms concealed from the kitchen and eating area (it is shocking how many powder rooms are placed literally--LITERALLY--right in the middle of the kitchen. Like ... seriously?)
Just clean lines, well placed rooms, a large, spacious master suite, etc. Also, while there are always room for upgrades (and they totally count on that), I feel like for the most part, you could buy the house stock with all builder grade options, and still come out with a pretty decent home.