jmoney74 said:capboba said:#FARM said:Birchtrail has one of the best locations in the community.. No road noise, no toll way noise and your'e so close to the pool. If only they had bettery layouts.
not to resurface dead threads but this is basically why we picked it out of the bunch in PP (beyond the price point and what remained, that is)
its funny that none of the floor plan felt perfect to us too, but the home will be for the parents later so we tried to get what fits them best. plan 3 is best bang for the buck but i'm not sure what they'll do with 5 bedrooms later. also thought about sage II seriously as they had a downstair master.
sprung for the one of the few lots with a driveway because a motorcourt home at this price range (even if its "cheap" for Irvine) feels insane - though that seems to be the theme at play now.
although I doubt we would have been able to get that 10k off asking price for the premium lot, in hindsight we should have paid more attention to inventory and probably tried to get more incentives out of the design/profit center.
all in all birch trail isn't THAT bad if you get one of the lots with a driveway and again its location within the community is fairly decent.
With the driveway.. I think you got a good deal (for Irvine at least). Honestly, the only thing I didn't like about the home was the kitchen Island. I liked the layout otherwise. Wife and I wanted an Island we could sit and eat at. Outside of that.. 5 bedrooms.. big master closet.. driveway.. two rooms downstairs/three up. It's pretty good.
actually we got the plan 1. haha... just meant that plan 3 in my opinion is best bang for the buck. thought seriously about plan 3 but will probably be forced to live with the in-laws then!
plan 1 makes sense for just the two of them later. the major cons of plan 3 is the island as you mentioned and the smallish great room. plan 1 had an actual island that can have seats/stools with a larger great room for entertaining.
the wasted space from the stairs/hallway in plan 1 is a drag but it is what it is.
agreed though that the lot with the driveways are where its at. plus each of those lots will have a healthy side distance between homes. felt decent for irvine:
http://imgur.com/jnkm7NJ
(edit: that attachment was ridiculous to view)