Ryan Homes Changing Market does not change Ryan Frederick Maryland

March 15, 2008

Dear family, friends and colleagues,

This morning, I regret to inform you of more bad housing news. However, this has little to do with the actual housing market, rather one housing company, Ryan Homes.

I am quite aware many of you own or have owned a home by Ryan, like me, because of the sheer professionalism they uphold as well as their customer service policy Our customer service program is predicated on fairness, timeliness and completeness they promote on their webpage, flyers, and advertisements. But as I mentioned above, I do have bad news. Ryan Homes no longer provides the service they had at one time.

I, too, own a Ryan Home. It has been a lovely Ryan Home and community. When I bought the home in 2002, the Ryan Homes associates I worked with were friendly, helpful, and had my best interests at heart. I felt like I could talk to them about any and all concerns I had with my home and they would work with mebecause they wanted me in their Ryan Home community.

Last summer, as I was expecting a baby, my husband and I wanted to purchase a home for the added space we would need. So of course, since we were so satisfied with our Ryan Home, we decided to go with Ryan againand we found the most beautiful community in Middletown, Maryland. Glenbrook was a new community where our baby could play outside with friends, a community where children sell lemonade on the corner and families talk to one another. I know it is hard to believe that a community like this exists in 2008, but it does. And we found it at Glenbrook.

We walked into the model home and met a very charismatic Ryan associate, Rich Philips. This is just how I remembered the Ryan Homes customer service. Rich worked with us on the June 2007 Home of the Month deal they had at the time. It was an amazing deal for a fair cost, just like Ryan Homes promises. Also, the home was expected to be ready in mid-December timeliness, just what we needed since our baby was expected to arrive in November. We put down a deposit and agreed to 4 more good faith payments that would occur within the next 5 months when our home would be ready.

Now I get to the bad news. The housing market began to fall. We felt it quite a bit in the process of trying to sell our home. It was clearly becoming a buyers market, and we would have to lower the cost of our homes listing price almost $30,000, but we figured if we were having these troubles, so was everyone else.

And we were right. Ryan was having trouble as well. They had not sold the needed units to begin construction, so our home wasn't ready in mid-December as promised...but we were told it could be late January/early February. The home wasn't ready then either. We were told April/May 2008. And most recently the end of June 2008. It is clearly hard to sell in this market. As customers and sellers of our home we feel it, and apparently the housing businesses, like Ryan Homes, feels it as well.

Clearly homes are costing less now, as ours had diminished in value over the past 9 months as we have waited for the delivery of our home. We asked for help from Rich Philips, the Ryan Homes associate at Glenbrook, with the cost of the home we were purchasing. He continued to say we qualified and there was little he could do (without removing some options from our home, however, many options were untouchable since they were structural optionsso we were limited to how we could give up our options to lower the cost) and he might be able to help with closing costs.

We were told we could not get our down payment and good faith deposit back (a total of $14,000). Actually we were told the bottom line was we move in for the cost of the home as it was in June 2007 or we walk away with nothing. In addition, when we explained our financial position for purchasing the home in this market, we were told by Rich Philips we shouldn't expect the buyer of our current home to pay off our debts.

As you can see, Rich Philips and Ryan Homes are very fair in this marketcurrently, these town homes start at $269,000 and options are 1/2 price right now. The market has changed, because if I constructed a house today it would be a minimum $25,000 less.

Rich Philips and Ryan Homes also are timely. Sure my home is not ready, but in the contract in fine print it states Ryan Homes has 2 years to deliver a home. So as it stands, I contracted a home in 2007 and could have it delivered in 2009. Very timely.

As far as completeness, I can't help you theremaybe in 2009 I can share with you the Ryan values on completeness.

I simply want to share this with my family, friends and colleagues so they do not go into a deal with Ryan Homes and be forced to live in a community they can no longer afford due to the housing market or loose a deposit/good faith payments because they can no longer back out of a contract. With so many people defaulting on their mortgage, we are simply trying to make sure we don't default on a mortgage we can not afford.

Please feel free to contact me to discuss this more. I would hate for anyone to go through what we have,

Sincerely,

Carrie L. Z.

Mrsz
Frederick, Maryland
U.S.A.

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