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I toured this house as well. If I were building it, I would have done some things differently, too (e.g. I'm completely over the two story great room and it's so unnecessary in a house where the regular ceilings are already 10+ ft high). My first impression after viewing it was that I would have thought it would have cost more than $1.3M. I thought it was nicer than any of the 3 Parade homes in Bella Vista (off Creedmoor), which ranged from $1.07M to $1.8M. I'd be interested to know what you were thinking of specifically where they chose not to put the money that you might have done differently.
Let's see, where do I begin. The reality is that we all have different wants and needs. I do not like bridge walk ways over looking entry/family rooms. To me, that is odd and noisy. I would have put in a larger pantry. A little corner pantry is fine for a lesser home but a home like that deserves a real pantry with counters and a sink/dishwasher for entertaining purposes. The office space tucked off the back of the house was so small and that is probably sufficient for the mom of the home, but there was no other office space. The laundry room had no space, although I did like that it had the room for the extra fridge. I would have made a bigger laundry room with some actual counter space for folding and such. I do not like guest bedrooms that are tucked off the back of your "working" part of the home. (i.e., kitchen, laundry, office) Maybe it is to be used for "the help", but it looked a little too nice for "the help." If you ran your hand down the front stair railing you could feel the joints - I would think it would have been done a little better at that price tag. I also felt that they spent less on the bathrooms. No frameless showers, no free standing tub, and they put the powder bath between the dining room and kitchen. Odd. And, I agree with you on the 2 story great room.
There were definitely things about the house I liked too. The keeping room, the cabinetry, the whole house system for music/tv, the screened in porch. Like I say, it was beautiful and very nice - I just would have done things a little differently. The elevation of the house was beautiful!
I am sure the owners will love their new home! And if they gave it to me I am sure I could make do
Let's see, where do I begin. The reality is that we all have different wants and needs. I do not like bridge walk ways over looking entry/family rooms. To me, that is odd and noisy. I would have put in a larger pantry. A little corner pantry is fine for a lesser home but a home like that deserves a real pantry with counters and a sink/dishwasher for entertaining purposes. The office space tucked off the back of the house was so small and that is probably sufficient for the mom of the home, but there was no other office space. The laundry room had no space, although I did like that it had the room for the extra fridge. I would have made a bigger laundry room with some actual counter space for folding and such. I do not like guest bedrooms that are tucked off the back of your "working" part of the home. (i.e., kitchen, laundry, office) Maybe it is to be used for "the help", but it looked a little too nice for "the help." If you ran your hand down the front stair railing you could feel the joints - I would think it would have been done a little better at that price tag. I also felt that they spent less on the bathrooms. No frameless showers, no free standing tub, and they put the powder bath between the dining room and kitchen. Odd. And, I agree with you on the 2 story great room.
There were definitely things about the house I liked too. The keeping room, the cabinetry, the whole house system for music/tv, the screened in porch. Like I say, it was beautiful and very nice - I just would have done things a little differently. The elevation of the house was beautiful!
I am sure the owners will love their new home! And if they gave it to me I am sure I could make do
Thanks for sharing. I very much agree with you. I don't like bridge walkways either, but that goes along with my disdain for 2 story great rooms as they typically go hand-in-hand. I didn't quite get the office space, but I thought it might be useful as a kids homework space. The laundry room was large, but had more cabinetry than I found necessary; if the room were more square it would have nicely accommodated a center island for folding, etc. The back bedroom, despite it being in the "working" part of the house, was convenient to the side entry; I could imagine guests being able to get their luggage into the room without much fuss. I didn't notice the lack of frameless showers but I thought the tiled-in tub deck seemed dated. I liked the kitchen, though my eyes mostly just fixated on the nice choice of granite; I didn't even pay attention to whether or not it had a functional work triangle layout. My favorite part of the house was the basement but that's because I really wanted a large, open basement like that when we were home shopping and that's something I compromised on and didn't get.
That's just it though, Raleigh offers locations that are better than the other but the entire area just isn't worth spending that kind of money on a house. IMO of course. But, we have the luxury of being able to live anywhere.
If I'm spending $500k, I want a lot of things this area can't provide. Namely climate.
This is one of the fastest growing cities in the country. A lot of people look to Fuquay, Holly Springs, Apex, Cary, etc.
It's truly a cluster frak here! Builders taking down one track to put up two identically FUGLY homes on the same @ $750K...I cannot prove it but I bet someone's palms are getting padded with a lot of $$$ for Charlotte tax purposes in doing it. The Millenials who are paying for these McMansion homes will soon be 45-somethings and not wanting or able to climb stairs every time they need something (esp the runners). The homes are shoddily made and many new ones already have black mold growing inside the walls. I'm looking to move for retirement in a few years...and NOT to a new home.
Paying big money for a house with a unencapuslated crawl space is not something I would do.
That's easy to fix - insulate and seal all your vents, make sure a good vapor barrier is there, put tubing so that all gutters are over 10 ft away from the house and stop other leaks down there. Put in a dehumifidier.
Or call Crawlspace Tech! If you're gonna buy a house, you have to know some construction knowledge or how to do things yourself. Of course, many people these days are just trying to live day to day and busy with so many "activities" and hardly have time to get an oil change on their car.
Not necessarily, the market can reject the current state of value provided by builders in a given area. It happens all the time (admittedly usually due to some factor like a change in interest rates, consumer confidence, the state of the economy, loss of a major employer in a given area, or whatever).
If buyers simply say "I'm not paying $700k for some over-sized poorly constructed box that's crammed right next to a couple of other boxes of sameness that's going to ultimately end up less valuable one day than the thin strip of land it sits on", then builders will have to answer to market demand.
If interest rates were to start edging up to 5-7% again, watch what happens.
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The reality is that we all have different wants and needs. I do not like bridge walk ways over looking entry/family rooms. To me, that is odd and noisy. I would have put in a larger pantry. A little corner pantry is fine for a lesser home but a home like that deserves a real pantry with counters and a sink/dishwasher for entertaining purposes. The office space tucked off the back of the house was so small and that is probably sufficient for the mom of the home, but there was no other office space. The laundry room had no space, although I did like that it had the room for the extra fridge. I would have made a bigger laundry room with some actual counter space for folding and such. I do not like guest bedrooms that are tucked off the back of your "working" part of the home. (i.e., kitchen, laundry, office) Maybe it is to be used for "the help", but it looked a little too nice for "the help." If you ran your hand down the front stair railing you could feel the joints - I would think it would have been done a little better at that price tag. I also felt that they spent less on the bathrooms. No frameless showers, no free standing tub, and they put the powder bath between the dining room and kitchen. Odd. And, I agree with you on the 2 story great room. 
Come to Charlotte....
