Getting Started

After 10 years in our current home Lesa and I have decided that we wanted to make a change. When we made that decision we expected that we would be looking for an existing home within Cranberry Township with a nice, level back yard.

Little did we know that we would end up in a neo-traditional neighborhood with a lot the size of a postage stamp. We had known about the Park Place development in Cranberry since its inception a few years ago. Our children played soccer at Graham Park which happens to connect to two neo-traditional neighborhoods (Park Place and BelleVue Park). We had driven through both of them many times dreaming of putting down roots in a neighborhood that offered access to a fantastic park, small shops within walking distance with the amenities of a resort.  A few years ago it was just a dream, the homes in Park Place started in the mid 400's and while we could afford to buy in that range it would have been and uncomfortable stretch. So we kept driving through the neighborhoods waxing poetically on how nice it would be to live in a "Leave it to Beaver" town always driving home to reality. To be fair we live in a very nice place now. Our neighbors are great people, and our home is very nice.

All of that dreaming changed when Ryan Homes bought 20 lots in the stagnating Park Place neighborhood. I suppose there were quite a few people just like Lesa and I waiting on a price drop because 10 of the 20 homes sites were snapped up in just a few weeks of Ryan publicly offering them for sale. We were one of the first families to see that Ryan had moved in to Park Place and we didn't waste any time in going to the temporary Ryan sales office to find out more.

Three days after beginning the process with Ryan we signed a sales contract for a John Steinbeck model, the base price of $269,900 being a large part of the reason, quite a drop from the $400K+ starting price the neighborhood had since its inception three years ago. Our sales person Wes told us that prices were set to increase in the next few days and we didn't want to see that reflected in the price of our home.

So here we are getting ready to take an unexpected journey.

Pictures of what our new home will look like...

Our color selections are wildly different, but this is the elevation that we selected: