Weeks 10 and 11 – Finished Custom Architecture and Financing Origination

Caldwell Cline in Marietta, GA has completed our custom architecture and we feel better than ever about our future home.  Roger Caldwell was great to work with and Artisan Custom Estates provided great technical and aesthetic support throughout the architectural design and planning stage of the project.  Now that we know definitively what we plan to build, we have prepared the financing package for the bank to originate construction to permanent financing (CP Loan).  We had the financial and credit portions of the package together and submitted a couple of weeks ago but the approval was awaiting the appraisal of the architecture.

We formally placed the lot under contract after a brief sequence of back and forth with the developer.  This is a great time to be purchasing a lot parcel from a developer in the Alpharetta, GA vicinity because the market has several years of inventory.  We were able to use this leverage as part of our offer and obtain what we feel like is an excellent value in the property.  We did not retain the services of a real estate agent in this process and our project manager from Artisan Custom Estates has been a fierce advocate of our interests in the negotiations and even got us a 3% discount on our final offer since there is no buyer’s agent fee in the transaction.  Once the CP loan has been approved and is ready to close we will purchase the lot.

We finally settled on the Blackberry Ridge subdivision in Alpharetta, GA.  Blackberry Ridge is an amazing piece of property with about 40 lots of various sizes, each larger than 2 acres.  Blackberry Ridge was developed in two phases with the second phase now filling up.  The property borders the Georgia Tech Club golf course and the Echelon subdivision.  Blackberry Ridge was the perfect combination of lot size, privacy (gated community), absence of amenities, and location in Crabapple / Milton / Alpharetta, GA.

The site plan, which specifies how the architectural footprint will fit on the lot, will be finished next week and then, once the loan closes, we will be ready for Artisan Custom Estates to seek construction permits.  After that comes the part we have all been waiting for – construction!

Weeks 4 and 5 – Selecting an Architect and Lots more Lots

We officially selected an architect last week and we are very excited about working with Caldwell Cline in Marietta, Georgia.  It is a bit of hike over to the offices, but Roger Caldwell seems to have an especially good understanding of the themes we are seeking in our custom architecture.  We have already established a number of elements of the elevation such as a wrap-around front porch and a separation of the main house and the garage with a breezeway.  Caldwell Cline also has a lot of portfolio plans that represent the mix of exterior materials – we do not want just brick and stone – that we would like.  We have continued to put a lot of thought into the elements we want in our floor plan as well.  Our next meeting with the architect will be onsite once we have finalized a lot selection.

On the lot selection, after reviewing numerous options in subdivisions across Milton / Alpharetta / Crabapple, we have narrowed the lot options down to three.  Once we narrowed the option pool to three, Artisan Custom Estates assisted us in a preliminary engineering assessment of each option since significant earthwork costs can be incurred to prepare a buildable lot for construction.  My tendency is to compare the lot prices directly to one another, but I have seen that the lot preparation costs can be a significant percentage of the all-in cost to prepare to start building.  Some of the specific considerations include basement configuration (i.e. which side of the basement will be daylight), water and erosion control, and landscaping plans.  Having a builder with experience developing land has been important in this part of the process.

The ball remains in our court at this point to narrow the lot options down to one.  At that point we can get started in earnest on our custom architecture.  Then, it will seem like we are really getting somewhere. -Bill