Hello All,
Past weekend we visited "Castle Hills" in Lewisville. We short-listed two homes - one is by Highland Builders and other one is by Darling Homes. Houses are already being built which is a plus as we would like to move by June/July. This is first time we are buying a new home.
My questions are:
1. Does any one here live in Castle Hills? Or have any info about the community
2. Any info/experience with Highland and Darling Buliders?
3. Things we should be aware of when buying new homes?
4. What are the must-do, must-check kind of things you will suggest?
5. Should we hire an attorney? If yes, any referal you have?
6. Do we need home inspector? If yes, any referal you have?
7. Any info about neighbourhood, school....
Any help, opinion will be appreciated.
thanks
-A.
A.,
We used C&C Inspections and were very impressed and pleased with the inspection we got.
http://www.ccinspections.com/
Hi A.,
We have a Highland home and we love it! They are a great builder. In fact, when we move we will try to get another Highland. We purchased a Highland spec and used a buyer's agent to help us through the process. Even though our house was new, we still paid for our own home inspection, as advised by our agent. I highly recommend Highland for their quality and customer service.
Good Luck!
-D.
I'm sure you will get lots of responses to your questions. I don't know anything about your two builder choices, so I can't comment. We built a new home in 2004 and loved the entire process. I guess what I liked most about the building from scratch was being able to pick EXACTLY what we wanted. My only advice is this, next year (when you are almost in your house a year) get an Inspector to check everything - a reasonable one will charge you about 20 cents a square foot. Then, take your list to your builder and have them fix everything before your one-year warranty expires. This will really save you. Good luck!
Hi A.,
If you aren't currently working with a realtor, I would love to help you.
I am a licensed realtor for Coldwell Banker. The home building process can be overwhelming, and I can help eliminate some of that!
Email me if you are interested and I can give you my number.
Best of Luck.
S.
We bought a new home in 1996 in the Carrollton area right off of Hebron Road. I wish we had done more research back then. I do suggest that you get a home inspector before the final walk through of the home. On the final walk through, I suggest that you bring a portable radio and plug it into each outlet to make sure all of them work. I didn't do this and half of the outlets in my kitchen don't work. I also suggest that you go out to inspect the progress of your home on a weekly basis. You can tell if they are cutting corners, etc. My home was one of the first ones built in the neighborhood, and when others started getting built around us we noticed the houses being built kept getting vandalized with the walls being punched, graffiti and such. You should check all the appliances to make sure they are working especially the air conditioner/heater and hot water heaters. Our closing was in December so we didn't think about the a/c at the time, but when we had our housewarming with 50 people in April, we came to find out that our a/c had a leak and didn't work. Make sure that you get everything fixed before closing because it took us almost a year and a few letters to the BBB to get things fixed in our home.
I don't know that an attorney is necessary, but I would suggest that you get a good realtor. We got a realtor to help us out with getting things that were promised to us and since we were having the house built, the home builder paid our realtor fees.
My 3 daughters went to Castle Hills Elementary for 1 year and the experience was horrible.
If you need additional info, please let me know.
Hi! We looked in Castle Hills a few years ago and it really is a beautiful neighborhood. We ended up buying across the street in The Homestead instead, but it was purely our personal preference. There's certainly nothing wrong with CH. They do seem to have particularly high Homeowners Association fees, and that doesn't even cover the swimming pool, which is an added cost. Just something to think about. The schools for this area are very good. CH has it's own elementary, and the closest middle and high schools are also highly regarded. There are also some really good private schools nearby if that is your preference. I have been told the neighborhood groups can be a bit cliquish over there. But that is just hearsay, and I would guess it is probably like that in most places. The people I have met that live there seem very nice and friendly. The golf course is not actually associated with the neighborhood, but it's nice to have there. It is somewhat expensive, but there are others around you can go to which are cheaper and in my opinion just as nice. I do love this area in general. The location is perfect being right in between I35 and the tollway. And YES definitely get a good inspector. I remember one really nice house we looked at in CH and it had been treated for black MOLD. Although they said it was totally fixed now, it was still enough to scare us off from that particular home. So just watch out.
