Plan B, Chapter 2

Today we visited the Tacoma-area location of a nationally known manufactured homes builder. We liked some floor plans we saw on their site. There was one in particular that interested us, but they didn't have a model of it on site. However, they phoned a couple who they had recently built the same model for, and these people were gracious enough to agree to have us come over and look at their home. We drove the 14 or so miles to their home and loved what we saw. It was laid out attractively with generously-sized rooms, and the kitchen was wonderful. We also were impressed by the quality materials this builder used and the documentation in their office about their homes having survived major hurricanes on the same block where others didn't. However, when we returned to the office and drew up the estimate, it would have turned out to be literally as pricey as the stick-built home we originally had selected last Feb. (This was even with what they called a "red tag discount".) So we realized we would need to do a bit more comparison shopping. We went online again once we got home tonight and found a couple more builders to visit next weekend. (My work schedule limits me to only being able to visit the model home sites on weekends.) Stay tuned for Chapter 3....