Profile of an Allen Edwin Home Buyer - Second in a Series

Allen Edwin Homes
We value what you value
Second in a series

Outside 1718 Rock Valley Drive, the new home of Paul and Christina Corey, people busied themselves about their yards in the late afternoon sun. Others clustered in front of open garage doors, casually weaving what will become the fabric of this still-young neighborhood.  Along Grand Prairie Avenue, a rambunctious Golden Retriever dragged its owner along on an evening constitutional.

Inside, three curious cats lined up under the front window as if waiting their turn. A faint knock at the front door paused our conversation briefly. On the other side three little girls. “Can Cassie come out and play?”

The Corey children, Cassie (6) and Jacob (10) seem to love the family’s new home. Cassie had only two requirements: The new place had to have stairs and playmates her age nearby. Their Allen Edwin home (2128 square feet) provided the stairs. The playmates came with the Nichols Landing neighborhood.

Dollars and sense.

Paul is a lab technician at MPI Research in Mattawan. He remembers their starter home on Ravine Road. “We rented previously. When we bought our starter on Ravine, we ended up staying there 10 years because I was finishing school.”

After a decade in a starter home, the Coreys were beginning to weigh their options about the same time the Kalamazoo Promise was announced. They wanted to upgrade but didn’t consider a brand new home affordable. But on the other hand, many of the older homes they looked at needed furnaces or replacement windows.

“The kids go to school right over there,” Christina said, pointing in the direction of Indian Prairie Elementary. “What we found when we came to check this out was that we could get brand new construction with square footage similar to other houses we had looked at. But the price was $10,000 to $20,000 less than anything else we had seen. Besides, it was a nice, self-contained neighborhood. It was exactly what we wanted.” Christina is a sales specialist for National City, and that kind of dollars and sense appealed to her.

Getting more . . . for less.

“We did do some other looking, but once Christina had seen this house, it became the gold standard. Everything else was measured against this. And the other ones just didn’t measure up,” Paul remembers.

“We just couldn’t find a comparable value. No other house could give us this square footage for the price. The other new construction we looked at from other builders was smaller but more expensive,” says Christina.

Could they have had a brand new home without Allen Edwin?  “Perhaps, but not as nice a home as this. We have four bedrooms and two and a half baths here. We probably would have ended up with a three-bedroom ranch with 1,400 to 1,800 square feet.”

Something for everyone.

I asked if the Allen Edwin product and process was for everybody, and I got a very interesting answer. “I would like to think that it is,” said Christina. “For those who want all the bells and whistles, they’re available. For people like us, the Big Home is a great value. We’ll be here a long time. In fact, I’m trying to get my friends to move here. I tell them, ‘You can get a brand new home PLUS the Kalamazoo Promise.’

“Besides, prices are going up all the time. This house increased in value before we even stepped in the door. We’re very happy here. We have lots of home for the dollar.”

Paul and Christina have nothing but good to report about Allen Edwin. “We didn’t really go through the design process so we can’t comment on that,” says Paul. “But the sales staff was very helpful. Really, everybody was. They were very good about planning meetings to accommodate our schedules.”

I asked if they thought it was a stretch to say that Allen Edwin had changed their lives for the better. Paul:  “I think that’s very accurate. I don’t know of anyone else who could have put this together. We’re very happy with the house—and with the neighborhood. It’s very friendly. In fact, we met more people here on our first day than we did in our other neighborhood in 10 years.”