I am so happy to have come across this post! I purchased a condo 4 years ago and am now selling it. I live on the 3rd floor (1 bedroom) however the unit below me is considered one unit and is a 2 floor unit (2 bedrooms). My downstairs neighbor and I started off rocky and since then she's been constantly complaining about excessive noise from my unit. Stomping, slamming doors, using appliances etc in the late hours of the night. It's come to the point where she's escalating to the HOA BOD- however i'm also now selling my unit because I purchased a single family home in a new development and in order to save and put myself out of the misery of living with my neighbor will just live elsewhere while waiting for the new house to be built. If I had known what I know now I would not have opted to purchase a condo on the 3rd floor (in a 4 floor building). 1) Living on the 3rd floor I received noise complaints from my neighbor below me while I also had to endure noise from the person above me. (Being the understanding neighbor that I was I never once complained to the person above me since they have children so I opted for earplugs instead). Mind you I live in a one bedroom and so I never purposely tried to create noise but some things are inevitable like having to walk to my bathroom. I refuse to tiptoe in my own house but I assure you i'm not stomping i'm walking regularly! 2) As many people mentioned you cannot pick your neighbors! I'm going to be honest my community is filled with some downright nasty neighbors. If it's not me dealing with my crazy neighbor there's constantly complaints and random letters on our community corkboard. People complaining about how people park, how people throw away trash, how long the water is shut off for construction. People literally use a notice as a form of communication and will write on it and form conversations on that one piece of paper. 3) Your condo might look/seem nice now but you never know what it'll look like 20-30 years from now. Although i've only lived in my place for 4 years I have to say that I was shocked at the lack of care for the building. My boyfriend got stuck in the elevator once for an hour with a cancer patient in our building on a very hot day and there is barely any ventilation in the elevator and no air conditioning! I later learned from a neighbor that our elevator is the wrong type of elevator for our building. Additionally I think the materials used for our building are just downright poor. I can hear the person in the unit above me snoring. I can't tell the person above me to stop snoring, but that's just to show how it could be a mix of bad materials. At least with an apartment you know it's a somewhat temporary situation.. if you hate it you could potentially move elsewhere with not much risk. Honestly before purchasing my single family home I even considered a townhouse as an upgrade to my condo. I figured that sharing sidewalls with individuals is a lot less worse than sharing floors/ceilings which I think are just terrible and usually amplify noise. At the end of the day i'm happy to be moving away from this situation and moving to a place where I can run the dishwasher and use the overnight cycle at night without someone berating me! It came to the point where my neighbor's requests were aggressive and rude and made me feel uncomfortable living in my own condo.

HORRENDOUS expexperience from start to finish. Placed a very simple order for cabinet pulls. After almost 2 WEEKS, I Recd the box with the wrong sized pulls. Call to customer service. Replacement order shipped out, and I had to use my own supplies to print their emailed return label. The second box arrives with AGAIN the WRONG sized pulls! Second call to CS. Use own supplies again to print a second return label. Then, I tell them to just cancel my order , Way too much hassle. These clowns cant even get prepackaged cabinet hardware right! Then, almost 3 weeks go by after I returned everything to them by UPS, and still no refund. SO…. once again I call CS. They have no explanation as to why my refund was never credited to my VISA account, and then it takes them almost another 5 days to issue the refund! ugh Never again, Build.com.

Depending on the cost we are planning to build the Tranquility plan in central Texas, but we can't build a basement to raise the height of the home due to hard soil. Has anyone added a second floor covered patio to the second story of the Tranquilty floor plan or one of the other versions that is similar to it that Garrell offers? Our lot we plan to purchase has a panoramic lake view, but we need to be up higher to see it. We are not planning to build any of rooms on the second floor, but we would like to have an interior staircase leads up through the unfinished second story that gives us access to door that opens onto a 2 story covered deck. If that isn't possible then we would need an exterior staircase with an easy walk up on the exterior side wall of the master/master bath. Our ideal location for our covered deck would be over the Master and Master bath, and we are hoping the roof line can be altered to allow a gable over the covered patio. Any thoughts or suggestions would be much appreciated, as I email Garrell 2 days ago, but I've heard back from them.

Yes, we are on a well which was the only "improvement" on the 10 acres when we bought it over 10 years ago. We bought it then as a buffer for another 10 acre property we already owned and more recently decided to build the straw bale house on it,, a dream for a long time. There are restrictions in this area for habitat protection but if you are looking at + 5 acre parcels I would think you could accommodate those protections and still find buildable areas for the size home you want. You will need to keep in mind the required clearances around your home for fire protection, a serious concern for this area. We love that we are rural but an hour to downtown San Diego, for beaches, and all that the city has to offer. I hope to post our home progress this weekend and will be happy to try to answer any questions I can for you. Best of luck!