[Michael 61]

I purchased a patio villa in December. Location was very important to me (Richmond). I tried six times in the lottery before I finally landed one. I would have been have been happy with any of the patio villa floor plans, as it is just me living in the house. I did ranks the floor plans from one to five in order of preference for my sales agent. I ended up with my fifth choice, but am still very happy with my new home (Topaz). There are differences in the layouts of the various villas - some have pass-through kitchens others don’t. The Opal has a bit more kitchen cabinet space. For the Topaz, pluses are a large two car garage (which Opal does not have), and an extremely large walk-in master bedroom closet. Minus is that there is no dedicated dining area, but just one large open living/dining area. A traditional dining room set will not fit, but there is a very large kitchen island to eat at. I paid an additional 20k for a corner lot location, which has a nice berm/landscaping with palm trees on the side of my yard that is maintained by the developer, and will offer privacy from the street as it matures. I also have room to build a large birdcage on the side of my home. There are two floor plans that offer golf cart garages, but with my large garage, I have plenty of room for my sports car, my golf cart and room for storage. The main difference when it comes to floor plans, are kitchen setup, size of garage and size of master bedroom closet, as well as whether a golf cart garage is important for you or not.