First Downside to Tract Housing...

I knew the day would come... I work in construction and warned our sales rep on day 1 that I'd probably be a little more hands-on and inquisitive than most buyers. But this weekend's surprise was still a little unexpected for me.

We have a “layout” of our home which is basically the same as what anyone can find on the company’s website. I don't even like to call it a "floor plan" because it's not drawn to scale, some wall locations are a little skewed, and it provides the bare bones of information. Give me 20 minutes in photoshop and I can replicate it. So being the involved and proactive future home owner that I am, I asked for a copy of the floor plans. My thought is that it would be nice to see a set of scaled drawings with some measurements so I can start planning outlet locations, overhead lighting locations, maybe start thinking about furniture, etc. I'd like to start thinking about post construction ideas that we have too. Backsplash, paint, deck, etc. Seems reasonable, right? So imagine my surprise when our sales rep told me that they cannot provide a copy of the blueprints because they are copywriten by the architect. What?!? I understand an architect and builder’s desire to keep trade secrets to themselves, though I'm not sure I understand what secrets can be found on a simple floor plan. Why is asking for a drawing of the house to proper scale such a difficult request?

I did a little bit of research and found that this is actually a common thing with production home builders. None of them provide copies of the drawings willingly and it seems as though most deny requests claiming that they are copywriten documents owned entirely by the architect. So in that respect, I can’t really blame OUR builder. This feels like a silly stance taken by industry in general. What harm is there in letting the home owner have a copy of nothing more than an overhead plan with a few measurements of the home they’re putting out hundreds of thousands of dollars for? I don't want to think that they might be hiding something from me, but this sure doesn't make me trust them more. Is each wall going to shrink by 18” and we’re not getting what we expected? I understand that a lot of buyers might be oblivious to these kind of things but I’m not! Fortunately, I have the utmost confidence in our builder to get things right. We've heard countless comments about how Paparone is excellent to work with and makes a great product!

Tomorrow is our color selection meeting so hopefully my mood will change!