Dearth of Cassidy's!!

Stanley Martin had three floorplans to choose from…

-          The Dawson at 1873 square feet

-          The Parker at 2097 square feet

-          The Cassidy at 2256 square feet

My only real problem with Stanley Martin’s design was not including a 3 bedroom with walk in closet in master and two car garage and dual master vanity in AT LEAST their middle level design.  (The Parker)  Really these things should have been included at all three levels.

What I don’t understand is even with smallest unit (the Dawson) at 1873 square feet they still had PLENTY of square footage to do these things.  We saw townhomes in Brookland and Hyattsville that had only 1300-1400 square feet but they still had a walk in closet, 3 bedrooms a two car garage and dual vanity in the master bedroom.  Pretty much every development we looked had these amenities even in their lowest end floorplan.  Every unit had at least a walk in closet in the master bedroom which EVERYONE wants.

So we knew we really wanted a Cassidy floorplan but unfortunately we found that the market agreed with us that these things are REQUIRED for buyers.  Not only were ALL of the Cassidy’s already sold but there were already EIGHT folks committed to buy Cassidy whenever they released more.    At this point (in early February) they had just started selling these units a couple of months ago offsite(45 minutes away) and a model was not even done yet.

To make things even worse, the next building (Building 3, units 18-30) was not going to even go on sale till March or April and would not be ready until Fall of 2017 and would only have THREE Cassidy’s in the entire 13 unit building.   So odds are even if we were willing to wait until Fall (and remember our first child is on the way and our lease is expiring on May 31^st) we STILL would not get a Cassidy because those eight folks in front of us would get first chance at the three units available.

So we were stuck in the situation where we adapt to a Parker or Dawson or choose another community altogether.   This made the decision for us to go with Riverdale MUCH more difficult as I feel it would have been a no-brainer for us had a Cassidy been available.

Anyway we decided to move forward with a Parker just because as you can see from my earlier post series “Why Riverdale” we were in love with the community itself. 

(https://riverdaleparkstation.blogspot.com/p/why-riverdale.html)

I still don’t understand the design decision from Stanley Martin’s perspective but hopefully if they are not allowed to build more Cassidy units to meet demand they are at least smart enough to jack up the prices on Cassidy units.   Only a $25,000 price differential to get what EVERYONE wants means they are going to continue to have the problem with a very long Cassidy waiting list.  (I have heard the waiting list is already MUCH longer today than when we signed our contract a month ago)

It is going to get to the point (if it is not already there) that EVERY Cassidy in the entire development will be accounted before the first building (6 units) is even inhabited and there will be 119 townhomes when this is done in 2019 or so.  

When you have already had commitments to buy ALL of one floorplan in a three year project before your model is even open you think you would realize there is an pricing/design issue.

 

Next post I will detail how we plan to make the Parker floorplan work for us.