Monday, March 30, 2015

The Price is... A Mystery

If there's one gripe I have about the building process with Ryan Homes, it's that they make it very difficult to price out what your home will cost you with the upgrades that you want. There were certain upgrades where our sales rep had immediate prices for us to review, even prior to signing the purchase agreement (the extra cost of buying an end unit lot, adding extra recessed lighting), but there were other upgrades where they couldn't be specific (adding hardwood).

I understand the options and availability of upgrades differs based on the house model you choose, but I hate that it's a total mystery to consider how much various upgrades will cost. As someone who really likes to research and comparison shop, it definitely disadvantages the home buyer making an informed choice. If they really wanted to make the process user friendly, each model should have a website -- heck, even just a binder -- that has a menu of how much it costs to add each upgrade. Oh, you want to add hardwood to the main level of the Matisse? It costs $X dollars. You want the french door fridge instead of the side-by-side? It costs $1,195 (as I discovered by emailing the SR).

One of our appliance handouts. Nary a price tag or upgrade cost to be seen anywhere.

If you did new construction, were you aggravated by this too? Or are other builders more transparent?

7 comments:

  1. This drove me nuts! Anything that was done by TAC Tile and Flooring, I couldn't even get an estimate on. We knew that we wanted a lot of hardwoods too, so we really wanted to be able to budget that in. We ended up spending a little over $10K in tile and flooring upgrades which is what we were estimating. But we didn't pick any tile above a level C upgrade and our hardwood was a level B (engineered hardwood). You could easily spend a lot on the tile and flooring if you went with nicer tile or the wide plank solid hardwoods.

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  2. Absolutely the most frustrating part of the buying process! If there is an agreement in place between Ryan and TAC where the prices are what the prices are, then we should be able to get a listing ahead of time so there aren't any surprises.

    PS: I'm buying in Greenbelt Station, too. Excited to meet another neighbor!

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  3. This would have driven me crazy! When we built our house (about this time last year we were picking out options) they still had a ton of prices on the options list we were given which included all levels of flooring, appliance upgrades, etc. The random one-off stuff wasn't included but most of it was. While we were in the middle of our process they told us they were no longer showing all of their options this way to their new clients to "make it easier for the consumer when choosing their options," which I thought was total BS.

    If I were you, I would make a long list of every single option I'm curious about and send it to them requesting they give you a price or at least an estimated price. They should be able to do this because we had it all on paper. Good luck with everything!

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  4. @LaurLew -- wow, that is totally wild that they used to have a price list and they took it away!! "Easier for the consumer," yeah right. I am so, SO grateful for all the blogs out there that have given me an idea of what options to think about and also a ballpark figure of how much it will cost. It's just so aggravating to have to do the research instead of being able to get the information easily from RH.

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  5. I love everyone's reaction! We were also pretty frustrated about the lack of transparency with the prices and upgrade. What we did was bug the hell out of our sales rep until they provided this information. I think they do it to control negotiations and so you won't run out the door once you find out how much the up charge is on things like flooring and tile.

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  6. AFTER we signed our agreement we got a binder of all the upgrades and the cost list, it made things much clearer and we made better decision. They did away with this?

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  7. @Dwtimes2, unfortunately, yes! I wish they still had this. I'm so super grateful I can use other blogs as research for what options are available and how much they cost.

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