Lennar Home Builders (Elgin: purchase, live, vs.)

[sbd78]

Originally Posted by giazma

sb78,

I think since we are bascially neighbors we should start a group on this area!

I hope your sub is doing well! I heard a buncha diff rumors, but i know you are on that yahoo group with me right? I hope william ryan takes over, their homes are so nice! BUTTTTT I cant believe centex didnt eat that one up since appearently they are eating up other builders! I have centex in sable ridge and couldnt be happier with the quality of my home

Giazma

LOL, yes Giazma, we are spokespeople on here for the Joliet/Plainfield area!

Yes, I'm in the Yahoo group too. I'm sure that William Ryan is going to finish the half built homes, I'm just not sure if they will begin building new ones and complete the subdivision. I'm keeping my fingers crossed 'cause its not fun living in a half built subdivision and I will be soooo happy if they do finish my subdivision! (And I'm sure my half built subdivision is not helping my property value!) I'm also hoping they fix those torn up roads around my subdivision. Yeah, it would have been nice if Centex had taken over, but maybe they weren't interested since we are so close to Sable Ridge. Centex must be doing pretty well, many of the other builders are folding and Centex is buying up new subdivisions left and right and expanding! So far I've been lucky and had no problems with my house but if I had it to do over, I definitely would NOT buy with Neumann! When I was looking to buy it didn't even occur to me to look into the financial health of the different builders and I certainly never imagined Neumann would go bankrupt! They were such a huge builder in this area! I guess you never know. But good luck to you and your home sale!

[irish setter girl]

One big thing to watch with SSA taxes is sometimes they must be paid in full for the property to be transfered to a new owner. There a few subdivisions where the sellers are struggling because they claim they didn't know the SSA was not transferable. As mentioned before some SSA taxes are a line item on your tax bill while other times it is a lump payment at the time of purchase. Builders claim to have lower home prices with an SSA but I really don't find that to be true. Has anyone out there specifically purchased a home or specifically didn't purchase a home due to an SSA tax? Just curious on buyer's opinions.

[sbd78]

Originally Posted by irish setter girl

One big thing to watch with SSA taxes is sometimes they must be paid in full for the property to be transfered to a new owner. There a few subdivisions where the sellers are struggling because they claim they didn't know the SSA was not transferable. As mentioned before some SSA taxes are a line item on your tax bill while other times it is a lump payment at the time of purchase. Builders claim to have lower home prices with an SSA but I really don't find that to be true. Has anyone out there specifically purchased a home or specifically didn't purchase a home due to an SSA tax? Just curious on buyer's opinions.

I always thought the SSA tax was a way for the builders to make their homes appear less expensive than they actually were. I'm not sure how the whole process works, but somehow bonds are taken out from the cities the subdivisions are in to pay for community infrastructure. (Instead of the builder paying for the infrastructure costs and passing it along to the customer within the price of the home.) I agree, the builders always claimed they offered lower prices because of the SSA, but it didn't always seem to be the case to me when I was looking. Like I said before, I was not a fan of the SSA set up and avoided buying in any community that had it for that reason. I've been wondering how well the SSA set up is going over with buyers now that the housing market has crashed. Also, in communities where the SSA is transferable, I would imagine it would make selling an existing home much more difficult since you need to find a buyer who is willing to inherit this tax, or else pay it off yourself when you sell.

[punkerjim]

Originally Posted by giazma

to the pp.

I live in the centex sub that you are saying is more money, it is, but we are a clubhouse community and our sub is alot more (imo) nicer. Summerfield is already built these horendous looking townhouses, you know the ones with 2 garages that look kinda like legos in my opinion, right in the middle it is RIGHT on top of 80 but you also have to drive an extra 10-15 to get to anything except the gas station, arbys and mcdonalds. You either have to go to 59 or allllll the way down ridge to the jewel in channahon. Sorry about the spelling errors but i am in a hurry , but the communites are 2 different animals. I am sad to leave my home (we are selling for job reasons) if you are interested in hearing about subs over here please feel free to im me.

Also, Breckenrige and kipling estates in shorewood were bought out by centex from lennar and concord.

my wife and i were looking to buy in sable ridge but the weekend we went there to put half the earnest money down and sign the papers, they told us they weren't allowed to sell. said something was going on but weren't too sure. took them days to return our calls and it turned out that they sold the lot we reserved when they sold of 8500 of their open lots for cash at the end of March.

While we were waiting for them to return our phone call it got me looking at Minooka again and we changed our minds. Told the lady at Sable Ridge and she was pissed that we weren't staying with her development anymore and she gave us the whole "sable ridge is much nicer than minooka"... she seemed really snooty about it. doesn't make much sense since it's the same school district, it's only 10 minutes away from Sable Ridge and the townhouses that are already there built by Lennar aren't really going to be close to our house... it's not even like they're part of our community.

but we did look at it and the dues on the clubhouse community (which actually figure out to be more than the SA in minooka) and the downside of an HOA made me change my mind with sable ridge. basements were not standard in minooka but we did pay for the full basement (partial is standard in sable ridge).

we compared the list of standard building materials and it's pretty much the same. one of the only big differences was that sable ridge offered low e windows and minooka didn't.

You're right that there does seem to be a difference between the two communities but i don't think now is the time to compare since neither are established as of yet.

[giazma]

If what you said was true then sable ridge is just about complete. We are pretty big already so i am actually glad if they are going to stop building here. I have to disagree saying that summerfield and sable ridge are not old enough to compare at this time, we have been here since 2006, and we were the 2nd phase. Summerfield has been around since at least 05 as well, we were planned on being WAY bigger then summerfield otherwise we would have closed out a long time ago, so I am happy that the 2008 prices will stop draggin our property value through the mud. Thankfully the prices in sable ridge kept our value higher than the subs that are selling for 200.....I have to ask the lady about that! (she is kinda a snot!, I agree)

[punkerjim]

Originally Posted by giazma

If what you said was true then sable ridge is just about complete. We are pretty big already so i am actually glad if they are going to stop building here. I have to disagree saying that summerfield and sable ridge are not old enough to compare at this time, we have been here since 2006, and we were the 2nd phase. Summerfield has been around since at least 05 as well, we were planned on being WAY bigger then summerfield otherwise we would have closed out a long time ago, so I am happy that the 2008 prices will stop draggin our property value through the mud. Thankfully the prices in sable ridge kept our value higher than the subs that are selling for 200.....I have to ask the lady about that! (she is kinda a snot!, I agree)

sable ridge is a nice community and we were pretty excited about going there and my wife would have loved the clubhouse community but i just don't think the sales staff treated us very well... and when you're going to spend $250,000 on a house that's essentially in the middle of nowhere i think there should be some level of respect.

the communities do compare fairly evenly in my opinion. they're in the same general location, same schools, essentially the same house (both single family subdivisions are surrounded by townhomes/duplexs) except one has an SA and the other has an HOA with dues of $38 /month. Centex hasn't even started building in Summerfield so people saying Sable Ridge is nicer are saying that based off the comparision of Centex to Lennar... and, duh... Centex is gonna win that battle.

All in all, I'm happy about my decision to stick with Centex.

[sbd78]

It's funny both of you say that about the sales lady at Sable Ridge. When my husband and I were looking to buy in this area, we hit all the subdivisions to see which one we liked best. We actually looked at Sable Ridge right before we looked at the Neumann subdivision we chose. We may have chosen Sable Ridge, but the sales lady there (no idea if it is the same one you are both talking about) barely talked to us. There was no model of the floor plan we were interested in so we asked if there was one under construction we could see. She said there was, but they couldn't take us through it that day and we would have to come back during the week if we wanted to see it. After we left there, we went to the Neumann subdivison and our sales lady started the hard sell. She started telling us about all the included features that are normally upgrades, brought out samples of cabinets and flooring, etc. we could choose from, took us around the subdivision and showed us available lots we could choose from, took us through some of the homes that were under construction so we could see all the different floor plans besides the models. So we ended up signing a contract with them that day. (Obviously that turned out to be a big mistake since Neumann is now BANKRUPT!) But seriously, if the sales lady at Sable Ridge had spent some time with us we might have chosen that community, Neumann just had a much better sales person. Maybe Centex should hire our Neumann sales lady, she's probably looking for a job now that Neumann is bankrupt, LOL!

[giazma]

sb,
your hilarious! the lady that sold my home to me in 06 is now in yoorkville and the other lady got fired. The one jim is talking about drives around in her lexus and doesnt even wave to the people outside that she sold to. I went in there and asked a question and since she made no money off of me she blew me off! O well, our neighborhood is nice and the sales lady only works there, so i guess it doesnt matter to me.....when i went to neumann the lady was such a witch, i told her i wanted to deal with someone else! and i got debra and loved her!

[amyLiz902]

Hello, We have our house in Clear Water Springs on the market, and if we sell it one of the subdivisions we are considering is Sable Ridge. Any feedback about the subdivision and or Minooka and Minooka schools would be appreciated. Thanks

[lauren1]

I've been in some very nice Lennar properties. With any builder do your home work first. As an example: Are you OK with an OSB roof deck instead of wood sheathing? Do you know the difference? With any new property look for quality of workmanship and materials used. Every builder is different.