Buying a new house on a new housing estate is a very different experience from that in the UK. Our last house was new, although it was two years old by the time we had moved in. Gratefully previous possible purchasers had not gone far enough to choose the carpet! We lived on a building site for the next three years or so and watched numerous houses being built the traditional way. our property was deemed large in the UK based on four bedrooms, a double garage and large garden. Prior to landing we looked at houses for sale online and wondered what 3,000 sq. ft. looked like when it was neatly arranged into rooms and of course we can't forget the garages here - double but with careful parking you could fit in three vehicles!!
Once we were settled in with family we started looking at property and found that 2,000 sq. ft. was far too big for us; we could easily lose contact with each other! We quickly discovered that the yards (gardens) were far smaller than we were used to and while some properties had designer gardens others were quite simply left to grass with a few trees and bushes. After a winter here in Calgary we now understand why. It is March, it is spring and the ground is still frozen; certainly no sign of snowdrops or crocuses poking through the soil. It snowed last Friday and flurries are forecast for the early part of the working week.
We thought that we might be better off looking at condos or townhouses as the floor plan would be smaller - far too small and the lack of windows and natural light put us off very quickly. We found some very desirable apartments in Tuscany, west Calgary, they were beautifully appointed, with balconies and green space around the development but we realised that to have the mountain view was at least an extra 20,000 C$ if not more. The cost of these apartments was more than the condos and townhouses we had looked at. Some builders have large homes and the sales staff, we found, had little understanding that we did not want a large property with a handkerchief garden. Finally we found a builder, Avi, who built smaller homes similar in size to our last house in the UK, about 1250 sq.ft. We looked in the west of Calgary but the properties were a tad too small and so we went in search of other developments in and around Calgary. Finally we settled on a development in the north west - Sage Hill. There are number of builders here and we looked at the show homes with more of a critical eye than before. We chose Homes by Avi as we liked t
he layout of a particular house and then in true British style asked where this particular design would appear on the development. We were shown a plan of the development, the lots allotted to Avi, given a map and told to go and have a look; some lots carried a price tag but certainly not as large as we had previously seen (as much as 250,000 C$). We found a site we liked and which would enable us to have a walk out basement as well as the sun from sunrise to sunset. So we chose to build at Sage Hill and to have the house that overlooks the Prairies. With the development of Stoney Trail it takes only 15 minutes or thereabouts to reach Highway 1 and the journey westward into the mountains! So on August 30th. 2009 we chose the plot, signed on the dotted line and had to pay a slightly larger deposit 
than most buyers as would as we were having a rather small mortgage. We spent time talking with a number of banking establishments about a mortgage; our bank wasn't as helpful as another, being more preoccupied with the fact that we were landed migrants, rather than the fact that we had money from the sale of a home prior to landing. The other Bank treated us like real people who had made the decision to migrate and settle in 
a new country; they took our credit reports (Experian and Equifax) made copies and talked over the mortgage process and procedure in Canada. What's more the offer was made within a few days and because the house was yet to be built we had a builders mortgage offer which secured the rate! Wonderful. Once the builder had submitted the house plans to the City of Calgary and they were accepted foundations and footings were in, this was November 2009 and we were getting excited!
We visited, and still visit, the house site at the weekends, when we had time to walk around and speak with Todd the Avi Homes rep on site; he was invaluable to us and helped us understand the building process. We spent time going around the show home and were shown what were upgrades and what was standard. In
October we visited the Homes by Avi selection centre: we had planned a Saturday afternoon initially to see what it was all about and aren't we glad we did! On display different kitchen layouts, appliances, flooring, wall and floor tiles, hardwood, taps in fact you name it and it was there. There a few folk around to help. Our meeting had been scheduled with Meg
an the following week in October. She was 'awesome' as we deliberated colours, appliance upgrades all inter mingled with questions, questions and more questions. In fact the carpet took longer to choose than anything else even the hardwood floor to the great room! We did upgrade the underlay throughout the house where the carpet would go. It wasn't as bad as we thought and we only overspent
our initial budget by a little. It was very obvious though just how much you could spend on upgrades without thinking. Shortly after this meeting we went to the sound system place - yes all wiring is in place at the time of the build not as 
an after thought. So the sound system for the TVs, the computer, telephone and home security wiring were all discussed, priced and added into the price of the house after the deposit had been paid. During this time the framers were framing the house: up went the walls followed by the roof and then the windows! Internal framing of the walls goes in next and grad
ually you begin to see the house taking shape.
By now we were into December, we knew that time would be lost due to bad weather and we also knew that work would not really start on insulating the property until the roof and sidings were
on. It wasn't until the second week of January 2010 that the roof went on; asphalt shingles as the wooden structure cannot really support ceramic tiles. Inside though the furnace had been added and heating ducts, pipes and vents were appearing throughout the property. Externally it was beginning to look like a house! The floor of the deck had also been added at the back of house, Bill had decided quite early on that it would run the length of the house rather than just a little thing outside the kitchen door. Both of us are looking forward to drinking tea/coffee/wine on the deck in the sunshine. Cheers!
he layout of a particular house and then in true British style asked where this particular design would appear on the development. We were shown a plan of the development, the lots allotted to Avi, given a map and told to go and have a look; some lots carried a price tag but certainly not as large as we had previously seen (as much as 250,000 C$). We found a site we liked and which would enable us to have a walk out basement as well as the sun from sunrise to sunset. So we chose to build at Sage Hill and to have the house that overlooks the Prairies. With the development of Stoney Trail it takes only 15 minutes or thereabouts to reach Highway 1 and the journey westward into the mountains! So on August 30th. 2009 we chose the plot, signed on the dotted line and had to pay a slightly larger deposit 
than most buyers as would as we were having a rather small mortgage. We spent time talking with a number of banking establishments about a mortgage; our bank wasn't as helpful as another, being more preoccupied with the fact that we were landed migrants, rather than the fact that we had money from the sale of a home prior to landing. The other Bank treated us like real people who had made the decision to migrate and settle in 
a new country; they took our credit reports (Experian and Equifax) made copies and talked over the mortgage process and procedure in Canada. What's more the offer was made within a few days and because the house was yet to be built we had a builders mortgage offer which secured the rate! Wonderful. Once the builder had submitted the house plans to the City of Calgary and they were accepted foundations and footings were in, this was November 2009 and we were getting excited!
We visited, and still visit, the house site at the weekends, when we had time to walk around and speak with Todd the Avi Homes rep on site; he was invaluable to us and helped us understand the building process. We spent time going around the show home and were shown what were upgrades and what was standard. In
October we visited the Homes by Avi selection centre: we had planned a Saturday afternoon initially to see what it was all about and aren't we glad we did! On display different kitchen layouts, appliances, flooring, wall and floor tiles, hardwood, taps in fact you name it and it was there. There a few folk around to help. Our meeting had been scheduled with Meg
an the following week in October. She was 'awesome' as we deliberated colours, appliance upgrades all inter mingled with questions, questions and more questions. In fact the carpet took longer to choose than anything else even the hardwood floor to the great room! We did upgrade the underlay throughout the house where the carpet would go. It wasn't as bad as we thought and we only overspent
our initial budget by a little. It was very obvious though just how much you could spend on upgrades without thinking. Shortly after this meeting we went to the sound system place - yes all wiring is in place at the time of the build not as 
an after thought. So the sound system for the TVs, the computer, telephone and home security wiring were all discussed, priced and added into the price of the house after the deposit had been paid. During this time the framers were framing the house: up went the walls followed by the roof and then the windows! Internal framing of the walls goes in next and grad
ually you begin to see the house taking shape.By now we were into December, we knew that time would be lost due to bad weather and we also knew that work would not really start on insulating the property until the roof and sidings were
on. It wasn't until the second week of January 2010 that the roof went on; asphalt shingles as the wooden structure cannot really support ceramic tiles. Inside though the furnace had been added and heating ducts, pipes and vents were appearing throughout the property. Externally it was beginning to look like a house! The floor of the deck had also been added at the back of house, Bill had decided quite early on that it would run the length of the house rather than just a little thing outside the kitchen door. Both of us are looking forward to drinking tea/coffee/wine on the deck in the sunshine. Cheers!
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