Building a Maracay Home

In the Beginning.... there was a sign

But not THAT kind of sign......

Back in early 2006, Eric and I actually saw a sign off Cave Creek Road, just north of our current home. It read something like "Maracay Homes Ashler Hills Coming Soon". Now, we were intrigued. After our little addition of September 2005, see left, we found our house a little too tight. But it was PERFECT otherwise..... the best location, near to a great park and with just amazing neighbors. So we knew we didn't want to far. So this sign was captivating.... and so we started down Ashler Hills Road to find a big dirt lot.

Some investigating, told us that Maracay was planning on building 32 new homes on this site. On either side of the development were homes, previously built by individuals. In back, the property abutted Dove Vally Estates, a large planned community with a golf course. Maracay told us we could look at their website and do an online construction of the home. And the big news was there would be BASEMENTS. So off we went, to http://www.maracayhomes.com/ to build our house.

Pictures in hand, we started calling Maracay. It became apparent that either they weren't expecting so many calls or the had expected to get started sooner than reality allowed. My understanding is that because of the location, the builder has to deal with both the City of Phoenix and the City of Cave Creek. And that probably made for slower going. Initially they hoped to offer lots in April. In reality, they opened up their first lots in June.

During this time, Eric and I thought we better compare the building of a home with the re-sale market. So we called our real estate agent, Denise Pruitt, who sold us out current home. Now this chick is a doll. She was incredibly patient with us while we (ahem, rather ERIC) took several months to decide that we were indeed a tad cramped in the current dwelling. She encouraged us to get our ducks in a row, get some time put aside and go look around. First things first though, we, collectively our family and Denise, got registered at Maracay.

When builders put together a community, they anticipate that some people are already out looking in the market, with their agents. For those pairs, going to register with the community together is important. If you go LOOK and TALK with a community without your agent, they will not get any commission should you buy. Now, perhaps that is okay with you. For us, we wanted Denise to show us multiple properties and give us her honest opinion about the whole she-bang. And we certainly weren't interested in parting with an hourly wage for her. If we bought a resale home, she'd make a commission there. And so we registered her with Maracay so if we bought there, her efforts and showing us the comparison homes weren't wasted. Only fair. And it doesn't cost us a thing. Maracay expects some agents and they pay a flat commission.

posted by Antigone @ 10:27 AM