First, let me go back to the beginning. February 24: We are in Cincinnati visity our son and daughter-in-law for our son's birthday. After several computer searches we find that there is indeed a 55+ community in the Cincinnati area. Since our son Douglas had a study group that day we go exploring. The community is located on the far east side of Cincinnati. After driving around we stop and the model home. Surprise, it was open. We told the woman that we were looking to build sometime in the next 2 - 6 years. I thought that the woman would give us some brochures and tell us to come back when we were ready to build. Nope, she showed us around the model, showed us where we would choose our options, explained the lot choices, showed us different plans and took us to a new house that was for sale. We left all excited, even if they didn't have an indoor pool there were a lot of good points here. The sales person told us that new designs would be coming out sometime in the spring. After we got home Rob started to do some searches and found two houses that were for sale. One looked promising. It had a full walkout finished basement, still had an unfinished part for my dyeing work. It had a very nice deck and backed to woods. I was a little concerned about how close it was to a nearby road, it had laminate counter tops and had an eat in kitchen which we did not want. The other house was way overpriced and was a possible lease option. Our daughter-in-law refered us to her real estate agent who set up viewings for us. We went down the last weekend of April and Douglas and Michelle came with us to look at the houses. We walked into the first one and while its pictures online were awesome it was not in person. Everything was just a little off. We went out on the wonderful deck and could hear the traffic on the nearby road. Scratch that house. Then we went to the other house. Oh wow, I was home. They had put in so many upgrades. There was very little that we would have to do to it, except repaint a few rooms. The countertops were Correan, not granite, but we could deal with that in the future. There was a swing under the deck facing the woods and ravine behind the house. I sat in it and could feel all of the stress leaving me. I told the rest of them to go on I was staying here. We went to the sales office. They showed us the new house plans, I mean straight off the presses. We looked them over each of us liking a different one, but we had time to sort that out. Then they took us out to choose our lot. We were shown one lot. It would have one lot backing up to it and two backing to the side. Um, no, not what we wanted. Well, that was the only lot available for the house we wanted. What king of choice is this? We were told that there would be new lots being developed but it could be a few years. We discussed everything and put in a kind of feeler on the 2nd house that we looked at. We felt that it was way overpriced and would they come down. Our real estate agent contacted theirs and she was glad that someone said that it was overpriced. We would have to wait a week because the owners were traveling. Well, the man wanted to come down, but his wife wants what they paid for it. OK, back to building. We kept looking a the plans and switched who liked what. There was a $20,000.00 price difference so we decided on the cheaper one and started making the changes that we would like as we waited for the new lots, and waited and waited. We went to Home Depot to checkout different cabinet, carpeting and counter top styles so that we got an idea of what we wanted. Denise, our real estate agent would call every few weeks and the answer was the same; no plat map yet. Rob got more frustrated and produced a power point presentation showing why they should develope the new lots. At last we were told that the new map would be ready sometime in August. We made plans to go down Labor Day weekend to choose our lot. We went right to Mainville on our way down and went tramping through the weeds and seeds where we thought that the new lots would be developed. I found a sewer main which told us that this could be it. We got back to the car and I checked my email. I had received and email from the sales person that the plat map was not ready and did we want to cancel our appointment. After a quick call to Denise we decided that we would keep the appointment because we had several questions and could look at some of our design choices. After consulting with different people we had decided which plan we wanted: http://documents.dreesteam.com/jsp/marketdocsAction.jsp?action=marketdocsGet&requestId=1&mddId=206403 now there is only a $2,500.00 difference. They answered our questions, Douglas asked about being able to get in to run cables when the walls were open and we went downstairs to look at choices. Basically we had a few of our questions answered, but felt unsatisfied. We were assured that we would be in by late summer. I forgot to ask what year. Denise was back to calling every few weeks and we kept getting the same no new news. On Wednesday the news finally changed. They were going to start clearing trees in the next week or so and would be staking the new lots after the first of the year. The lots will carry a premium of $25,000.00 and we have been promised first choice. So that is where we are at. I will post everytime there is something new. I am still doubting that we will be in by the end of August 2014.