Nervous about NVR mortgage company and appraisal

  I have been worried about using NVR Mortgage company ever since I started researching building with Ryan Homes.  While there are definitely a lot complaints about the building process and final product, the worst and most numerous complaints tend to be about their mortgage arm.  Over the past weekend my wife and I were showing off the lot to my sister and her husband when some of our future neighbors came by to say hi and introduce themselves.  The gentleman and his wife were both nice and very forthcoming with information regarding their feelings about building with Ryan, and in fact their current home was the second home that they have built with Ryan.  The good news is that they were happy with both of their building experiences, but they did have a few choice words when it came to the NVR mortgage.

  According to them NVR dropped the ball numerous times on their first home build and as a result of NVR's mistakes, they got stuck with a higher interest rate than what they were expecting.  This upset them so much that they refused to use NVR for their second home and went with their own mortgage lender.  They had been smart in negotiating that all of their incentives would be strictly based on their home purchase and NOT with using NVR, unlike ours.  Then they told me their problem with what is my current biggest fear: the appraisal.  The appraisal that was performed right before their closing came in $47,000.00 below their purchase price!  Ryan homes did agree to drop $17,000.00 off of their purchase price to help close the gap, but that still left them with picking up the extra $30,000.00 out of their own pocket.

  Why this worries me is that I had inquired about how often that happens with Ryan before we signed the contract and was told that it almost never happens...unless you load up a home with a lot of upgrades, which we have.  The neighbors had built the Waverly model, which is much larger (read: more expensive) than the Jefferson that we are building with a very large number of upgrades, just like us.  In fact, I won't be suprised if our agreed to purchase prices are within a few thousand of each other after we finish with the last few changes and Guardian upgrades.  The only thing that I can hope for is that since our basement is a walkout and is therefore added into the final square footage tally (approx 4500sqft) , that our appraisal will still come in close to our purchase price compared to the neighbors' 4100sqft since their finished basement wasn't added.  If not, Ryan better be prepared to come WAY down from the purchase price.

In closing of this WAY too long post, if you are thinking about building with Ryan homes, make sure you get ALL of your incentives, no matter who you use for financing and then I would ask to see any appraisals in that allotment that fit closely to the model you want to build with ALL of your desired upgrades.