Are all Austin Builders POO POO HEADS!? (Round Rock, Georgetown: short sales, foreclosures)

[riaelise]

I'd take a Tom Pitt, a Doug Scott, or any local Texas builder home over any of the production builders any day of the week. Even if these homes are pushing thirty. We have smooth walls...never knew that was special, go figure. I much prefer textured though. We've opened the walls and the lumber is pristine, as if the house was built this year instead of 1989. I'd rather customize a house with good bones if you asked me.

[kittenhead]

Originally Posted by mhudson78641

Was that 150 or 15? Find it hard to believe a bank would take a short sale for 15 grand.

No, 15. You read that correctly.

[kittenhead]

Originally Posted by El Senor

Why sell? You had the option and chose to lose the house.

To be perfectly honest, we were trying to protect our credit. Took a hit for a couple of years but not awful.

If I'm being perfectly honest, the banks had zero clue what was going on. One would say foreclose, the other said short sale.

Then lets not even get into the issue of the fact that NO ONE could find our original mortgage, paper work, the list goes on. I had just opened our brick and mortar studio, then my hubby lost his job for 4 years. 4 years!

I was lucky I was able to keep everything afloat financially, but it was a real **** show. No one knew at the bank what was going on, what help was available for us to help with the massive depreciation of our property and eventually the bank themselves told us to walk away and we did the short sale through the process.

I won't even talk about squatters in our neighborhood and how drug dealers started moving in. Shootings, etc.

I had 7 close friends go through the same thing here. It was not pretty. I do not want to live like that ever again.

I have my 20% I just need to understand the build process and why it seems so shady. I am just trying to be an informed consumer.

Funny, I do a lot of branding for companies and the home builders "marketing" messages are so screwed up. They don't live by their ethos at all. Then they wonder why they all have bad reviews. But doesn't matter cause people keep buying I guess.

[kittenhead]

Originally Posted by riaelise

I'd take a Tom Pitt, a Doug Scott, or any local Texas builder home over any of the production builders any day of the week. Even if these homes are pushing thirty. We have smooth walls...never knew that was special, go figure. I much prefer textured though. We've opened the walls and the lumber is pristine, as if the house was built this year instead of 1989. I'd rather customize a house with good bones if you asked me.

Is there a way to find those homes in a search?

[kittenhead]

I don't expect a lot of people to by empathetic to relate to me for going through the housing crisis like we did. I don't know how bad it was there in Austin during that time, but if you lived through it, I am sure you can understand.

But I am highly nervous to get back in there. I don't mind a little turbulence but I do want information, education and be able to make the best choices with my money.

[Austin97]

Originally Posted by kittenhead

I don't expect a lot of people to by empathetic to relate to me for going through the housing crisis like we did. I don't know how bad it was there in Austin during that time, but if you lived through it, I am sure you can understand.

But I am highly nervous to get back in there. I don't mind a little turbulence but I do want information, education and be able to make the best choices with my money.

austin was like that in the 80s during the S&L crisis. Many people just left their house keys on the counter and walked away. Some of the older members on here surely lived through that.

You can definitely find what you are looking for, but they will be charging 300/sq ft.

[kittenhead]

Originally Posted by Austin97

austin was like that in the 80s during the S&L crisis. Many people just left their house keys on the counter and walked away. Some of the older members on here surely lived through that.

You can definitely find what you are looking for, but they will be charging 300/sq ft.

Wow. Good to know. I wonder how they managed to get back out there....

[centralaustinite]

Originally Posted by kittenhead

Wow. Good to know. I wonder how they managed to get back out there....

I know! After the S&L crisis in the late 1980s both banking regulations and bankers were very conservative in TX, second mortgages were highly limited, lines of credit too (this was eventually opened up) but TX as a whole did not have the same type of real estate bubble as other states did. ALSO, our property taxes are high and they are payable each and every year and that keeps a lid on people buying too much of a house . . . the gardener who was able to finance and buy a $750K home? In Austin you would own $15K in property tax EVERY YEAR on that house . . . so people tend not to buy more house than they can truly afford, regardless of how big a mortgage they can get. So less bubble, less bursting. There was pain in the 2008-2011 time frame but it was much more limited.

[Mimmyu]

Originally Posted by kittenhead

I thought that was the process too. You have to sign the contract before going to design center..which I felt was ass backwards

It makes sense to me though. They want the contract done as early as possible in the process so that they can get the plans drawn up and submitted to the city. Your selections in the design center are rarely going to affect any of that, so even if you walk away at that point, they can keep moving forward and make it a spec home.

[kjkw]

Originally Posted by kittenhead

I thought that was the process too. You have to sign the contract before going to design center..which I felt was ass backwards

You can go to the design center before you sign and Drees even has packets that list the upgrade prices for each floorplan in each neighborhood. I think most builders have hrs that are open to the public. Drees is Fri morning.