All Forum Posts by: Michael Showalter

That was tremendously helpful. I do have an agent and I appreciate you being sensitive to that. Gives me lots of questions to ask both my agent in preparation as well as the sales rep. In your experience, do builders offer locations of developments they've done in the past. For instance, could I find a series of similar houses built 5 years ago by the same builder and go ask the owners about the quality and durability? Thanks again for responding.

My wife and I are looking to buy a new home in DC from K.Hovnanian Homes with a delivery date of June 2016. On line reviews from around the country aren't positive. Few reviews at all are local to DC though. Part of me feels that only those with bad experiences would post reviews for a builder online. Am I ignoring an obvious mistake by choosing to look at it this way? Would welcome reviews as well as thoughts on how to parse this information. 

Oops. Forgot to mention that earlier post is directed at Elizabeth Nourse's response above though I welcome any input.

We're about to purchase a home from one of the builders listed above. I did an online review search and Ryan/Hovnanian come up very poorly compared to the other companies you listed. However the majority of reviews are from other parts of the country than my market. There's no mention of them on BP other than your review. Any thoughts? I don't know enough about construction to check the quality of products and workmanship.

That's a really good point. So you think I should do a full background screening even though roommate #1 picked her as her roommate?

Wow, that was easy.

My current tenant's lease ends in 4 months. She has taken a roommate. I know that I need to add this person to the lease. Do I write an entirely new lease for both? Do I give the new tenant a separate lease?  What's the best practice knowing that in February we'll be due to increase the rent? W

Hi Roberto, I don't know much about Chesterfield. Can you tell me anything about your community? Is there a local industry that is a draw that powers the local real estate market? I live in DC but am considering moving and saw some listings there.

Thank you for all of your posts.  And thank you Marcia for all of the details. We're just starting out so this is very helpful.

We're in DC renting a 100 year old row house. Everything works but it has plenty of  quirks and flaws in the plaster and trim and flooring.  We were going to bring a camera and let the tenant take pics of whatever she cared to notice. Is this a good method? Any other suggestions for how to document the flaws before someone signs their lease?