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So, Aberdeen Maryland? - Page 2

post #31 of 84
3/17/11 at 11:03am

My cats dont like the move itself but they really seemed to love exploring new surroundings and were busy exploring every closet, every open window and every inch of my new apartment... My sister knows of a cat boarder place around the Navasink River area if you want me to ask her what the name is. I think I remember you telling me you're not far from my sister in NJ...      Finding pet friendly apartments is harder and its even worse if you have a dog it seems..

 

Jay 

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post #32 of 84
3/17/11 at 12:45pm
Thread Starter 

I think I know the place you are talking about, Dogs on the Farm (cats too!).  I'd leave mine with family but not boarding.  Thanks tho!

 

Dave, it's $55 a night for a 'special rate' we negotiated, which is $30 less than the normal Per Diem rate and $45 cheaper than the advertised price.  Works out to about $900 a month for the 16 nights a month I've been averaging down here.  Could I get an apartment for $750 or so?  Yes, but would have to have a 6+ month lease, 2 months up front, pay for a background check, etc.  Was worth it to not go through the hassle.

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post #33 of 84
5/12/11 at 2:45pm
Thread Starter 

Accepted the offer on my house.  Next!

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post #34 of 84
5/12/11 at 2:56pm

Awesome!

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post #35 of 84
6/15/11 at 5:45pm
Thread Starter 

Yeah that offer fell through but another came in.  Through inspection and on to closing next friday.

 

Against my better judgement I put in a contingency offer on a house I've been dying to get but held off because I didn't want to go contingency.  They dropped the price considerably today and I had to jump.  Fingers crossed!  Havre De Grace, dry side of the highway, next to Bulle Rock.

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post #36 of 84
6/16/11 at 8:02pm
Thread Starter 

Contingency failed, someone put a real offer in, oh well.

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post #37 of 84
6/16/11 at 8:10pm

Bummer Sam, I have a cash offer on my house so I'm closing on the 24th and I'm here in NJ busy cleaning house.. literally..  I hope all things work out and who knows, the market might not have seen bottom...

 

Jay

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post #38 of 84
6/21/11 at 1:56pm
Thread Starter 
Wild that we both have the same closing day, grats!
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post #39 of 84
11/6/11 at 7:44am
Thread Starter 
So after 13 months of not finding what I want on the used market I gave in and have put a deposit down on a new, yet to be built house with my exacting custom specifications. I literally chose every option that suited my fancy, tho I stopped short on a few things like the tray ceilings and double ovens.

There's only two problems.
-I blew my budget by about 30k (oops)
-I had to actually buy in the town/city of Aberdeen.

The good news is that while for tax purposes I live in Aberdeen (bad juju) the house is VERY close to Churchville, which is rustic and rural. So in my mind it's a downside but it's actually not too bad cause it's out in the sticks like Churchville is but I still get all the services of Aberdeen including City Water, City Sewer, Natural Gas etc. and I will have FIOS on the day I move in.

I will say that doing this is going to let me build an epic Home Theater in the finished basement. =) I'm having the basement finished pre-construction and it'll have a full bath down there plus a walk up stairs, so it's techically able to call it a bedroom I guess. The other possible downside is that it is a Ryan home, and if you google "Ryan Homes sucks" there's definitely some unhappy campers out there, and I have taken that into consideration, but found the positives outweigh the negatives. I have 4 coworkers who bought Ryan homes in Cecil and Harford and they have nothing bad to say at all.

If you care to see what mine will kinda look like, you can see a virtual tour of the model here:
http://www.motion-vr.net/ryan/ryan_tours.aspx?tn=806

I'd never be able to afford this house up in NJ (Hell I'd never be able to afford it if it was 10 miles over in Bel Aire) so I'm pretty jazzed to get it. Just waiting on mortgage finalization now and then I'm stuck in hotels still till Mid March at least, but the end of the tunnel is in sight.
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post #40 of 84
11/6/11 at 7:47am

Nice! Building is exciting!

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post #41 of 84
11/6/11 at 10:05am

Congrats! I am shocked to hear that you couldn't find anything on the used market, but Maryland seems to have held up to the economic conditions better than most. Ryan homes are pretty much the biggest builder in MD so no surprise on there being some haters, but I expect that is the case for almost any builder out there.  MBR looks fricking awesome with that sitting room in it.  So I'm guessing that's the Eagle's Rest development?  Definitely better to be west of I 95...

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post #42 of 84
11/6/11 at 11:05am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sam Posten View Post

If you care to see what mine will kinda look like, you can see a virtual tour of the model here:
http://www.motion-vr.net/ryan/ryan_tours.aspx?tn=806


Fricken Flash. I'm surprised you'd buy a house from a company that abuses web pages thusly! ;)

 

I bought a Ryan home six years ago. My first home, and I learned some lessons. Particularly, Ryan cuts costs as much as possible. Have a good inspector before closing, and have the roof, furnace, and so on checked by someone other than Ryan's contractors a year later.

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post #43 of 84
11/6/11 at 2:29pm
Sounds good Sam, glad you found something worthwhile. When I was at Fort Mo. I was told that Aberdeen itself wasn't that hot and I never got around to visiting there before moving to the Berkshires.. I'm soo put off buying a house, I expect to be renting up here for quite some time. I am not interested in having to sell a house like I did in NJ and I'm actually enjoying the freedom of renting and having not to be stuck working on house projects all the time!

With a brick house, at least you wont have to constantly paint the exterior!

I think my father has a Ryan home in Delaware and while it does seem that some of the work appears cheap, he hasn't had anything major that I know of go wrong. You can probably find dirt on any of the typical house builders these days..

Jay
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post #44 of 84
11/6/11 at 4:27pm

I don't mean to say not to buy Ryan. But there were some things done wrong (e.g. furnace drain trap installed wrong; a vent carpeted over) I didn't discover until years later. Buy pre-existing has its risks. But, it turns out, so does buying new :)

 

If I were doing it over, I'd be more aggressive and picky during the inspection process and that first year of ownership.

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post #45 of 84
11/7/11 at 6:45am
Thread Starter 
Yep, I definitely intend to be fully involved the whole way, and I'm considering having an independent evaluator take a look at it before acceptance.

The one thing that has me flipped is apparently MD does not require Attorney Review on home sales and doesn't even require attorneys for closing. I'm used to NJ enforcing that which I think is a good idea and was money well spent when I both bought and sold.
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post #46 of 84
12/29/11 at 8:36am
Thread Starter 
And we're off!

365

After being told that my ground breaking had moved up to last thursday, but then showing up and finding no workers, we finally got started yesterday. Basement was dug up and this AM the crew was there building scaffolding and forms.
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post #47 of 84
12/29/11 at 10:58am
Cool, must be exciting but nerveraking as well.. Lets hope they don't find any ancient dinosaur bones or perhaps an old graveyard... GET OUT!!!!!! smile.gif

Jay
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post #48 of 84
1/4/12 at 12:10pm

 

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jay H View Post

or perhaps an old graveyard... GET OUT!!!!!! smile.gif
 


Nah, just move the headstones and you'll be fine.... smiley_wink.gif

 

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post #49 of 84
1/4/12 at 1:27pm
Thread Starter 
If there are any graves there now they are under a heavy duty slab =) They got a lot done over the holiday weekend!
365
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post #50 of 84
1/4/12 at 4:22pm

Toured some Toll Brothers model homes in Ashburn (a couple hours SW of you).

 

Found one gorgeous house I want to buy, live in the basement and rent out the rest of the home!

 

This Mid-Atlantic market is *so* different from Rochester, NY. Costs are double, which I expected. But the style, assortment, and options are very different. It's going to take a bit to figure out what I want.

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post #51 of 84
1/9/12 at 1:07pm
Thread Starter 
Toll Brothers are nice homes, way out of my league, nice choice!
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post #52 of 84
1/9/12 at 1:21pm
So Sam, how many Septims did that cost ya? smiley_wink.gif

Jay
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post #53 of 84
1/9/12 at 2:01pm

Yep. Don't think we'll be buying  TB house this year :) Huge and expensive. And the town homes...the layouts are all lacking. But much house hunting yet to do.

 

Are you pre-wiring the house for ethernet or audio during construction? Can you comment on the costs? When I bought new-build in 2004, any sort of pre-wiring was stupid-expensive. I'm wondering if that's gotten any better?

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post #54 of 84
1/9/12 at 7:12pm
Thread Starter 
Yes, being pre-wired with gigabit ethernet and whole house stereo. I think the total cost for that plus the pre-wired HDMI runs and two 5.1 surround wall packages were well under $5k but I am not sure on the specifics, there is a lot of stuff wrapped into the packages I put together.

I went nuts on the options and the total price is about $450K. Base price on the house with nothing added in is $380 but in addition to the stuff listed above I am having a sitting room, morning room, finished basement, granite throughout, hardwood in a lot of rooms and things like chair rails and upgraded carpet and tile.

My original budget was $399, but I could not find exactly what I wanted where I wanted, so I had to pay more. I searched for literally 16+ months to try to fund something I could compromise on but ultimately had to spec out a home to my tastes. Its a LOT more house than I need for just me, but I intend to have 2 roomates with nice size bedrooms and lots of accomodations for lower than any of the rental places I looked out, so I'm not worried about finding someone trustworthy to help share some of the costs.
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post #55 of 84
1/10/12 at 6:11pm

I understand, having looked around the Chantilly region a bit: new build starts big and quickly get huge. And to get right the few rooms you care about, you have to build a mini-mansion at $500k+ with 1500 sq ft you don't need. Enjoy. Getting a couple roommates will quickly eat up the mortgage.

 

And your house wiring seems much cheaper than I saw in '04. I think it was about $3000 or more to get ceiling speakers wired into the bedroom. What you did would have been $10k-$15k, I think.

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post #56 of 84
1/11/12 at 6:54pm
Thread Starter 
Well I chose Klipsch, the Bose were the more expensive ones biggrin.gif
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post #57 of 84
1/11/12 at 6:57pm

You chose...wisely. :)

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post #58 of 84
1/11/12 at 7:05pm

Well...it's not like Sam just fell off the turnip truck...

 

biggrin.gif

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post #59 of 84
1/12/12 at 7:41am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike Frezon View Post

Well...it's not like Sam just fell off the turnip truck...

biggrin.gif

Ya know, that would be pure hell, I hate turnips, I put turnips below carrots and above beets. Yuck, I can't imagine being stuck on a turnip truck. eewwww..

Jay
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post #60 of 84
1/12/12 at 9:40am
Thread Starter 
Truth is I don't mind Bose as long as they aren't the plastic ones. My BIL has a terrific pair of bose wood box speakers from the mid 90s that still sound terrific.

Turnips I can take or leave tho! Mom cooks em up like mashed potatoes and they arent so bad!
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