From OLD to NEW

We are about to begin on an exciting journey of building a NEW Ryan Home, something we never even considered until about a month ago when we FINALLY received an offer on our current home after having it on the market for 3 YEARS! Our current home was built in 1904. It is listed on the National Registry of Historical Homes. We found our current home just a 2 months after being married when we were still NAIVE and unrealistic about just how handy either of us are with tools in general. Yes, there is maintanence and repairs necessary with any home, regardless of its age, but an old home requires that special touch to keep it true to its original character and craftsmanship yet functional for modern day living. Our current home was built at the beginning of the craftsman period. It is a colonial with LOTS of beautiful woodwork throughout. We were immediately drawn to it for its beautiful character, meticulous woodwork, and stately charm. We did not have kids yet, so naively did not look beyond the house itself. Fast foreword a few years, and along came our twins, and life as we knew it changed forever. Our beautiful home on a main road of a rural village was no longer as charming as we had dreamed it would be when we were newlywed and purchased oour home. We now saw a house with a yard that we could not let our children play in alone, as the traffic in front of the house was way too dangerous, and the locals, well.... Let's just say they are not as "neighborly" as we had hoped them to be 8 years ago! In the 3 years we have had our current home on the market, I can at least say we had TIME to narrow down where we wanted to live. We have chosen to go back to the town and school district that I grew up in, and my mom still remains. It is about 30 minutes closer to the rest of our "life" ( work, friends, kids activities, etc....) so the close proximity to everything will be a welcomed change for sure! We thought we had our choices narrowed down to 2 specific neighborhoods. We saw several houses come and go on the market during the 3 years that we have had our current home on the market. So, when we FINALLY got the offer, we thought it would be a no brained to find our next home. We spent a few days visiting every existing construction home on the market in the 2 neighborhoods we loved,agreeing that location and neighborhood were of primary importance to us. After touring the homes, we saw lots of homes we liked, but nothing that we just loved. We did like/love one, but someone else beat us to the offer. Then, what began as a whim, led us to our now future home. There is a neighborhood about a mile away from the 2 neighborhoods we had thought were going to be our only considerations. The neighborhood began as a Parade of Homes showcase neighborhood about 5 years ago, but never took off as the original developer had hoped, most likely due to the location. It is just within the limits of a village municipality. We live in Upstate NY which is already known for extraordinary high property taxes when compared to national averages, so when you add a village tax on top of a town tax and a school tax, well.... People do tend to shy away, especially when a tax on parade of homes showcase home price point... So in comes Ryan Homes... They have pretty much become the primary builder in the neighborhood, and it is finally taking off. We stopped by to look at the model home on a "whim" after doing a marathon of open houses one Sunday, and of course, fell in love! After crunching the numbers, it turns out we can build a new construction home for about the same price point and features that we were looking at in the existing construction neighborhoods, and the taxes, with the added village tax were not that much more...TAXES... They are what they are, I suppose! In the end, we will have a NEW home with OUR choices of colors and design, and not a home with someone else's color choices and material choices that we have decided that we can just "live with" until we get around to making it our own!