Young couple purchase Pardee home

For Marty and Sharon Gavin, 2011 has been an eventful year that included a move from more than 9,000 miles away and wrapped up with a new baby and a new Pardee home.

The East Coast natives started the year on the island of Saipan in the Western Pacific Ocean, where Sharon held a position with the U.S. government.

They traded in their views of sandy beaches and crimson sunsets for the wide-open beauty of the Mojave Desert and a new Pardee home in the northwestern valley with sweeping views of nearby mountains and the Las Vegas skyline.

A quick trip to Las Vegas from Saipan with the goal of finding a home led the couple to Pardee and their sales agent Maria Serna.

"Our Realtor showed us several foreclosure homes and we were shocked at the amount of work required to make the home livable," said Marty Gavin, a writer. They eventually decided to look instead at new homes and discovered Pardee's Solstice neighborhood in Aliante.

At Solstice they found their home in the Plan 4, with its island kitchen, den, loft and six bedrooms.

It is also where they met Serna, who knew that same floor plan was available at another Pardee community and that the construction schedule was more in tune with the Gavins' schedule and unique circumstances.

"I gave them my cell number and email address and offered to assist them anyway I could, knowing that they were doing this on a short visit to Las Vegas and had to wrap up many of the details from Saipan," Serna said.

And all of this took place while Sharon was eight months pregnant with their first child.

After a whirlwind move, an earlier-than-expected arrival of daughter, Cecilia, in September, careful coordination to ship their three beloved dogs from Saipan and a mishap with their belongings shipped from overseas, Marty and Sharon Gavin said they are looking forward to celebrating their first Christmas in their new Pardee home.

"It has been a busy year and the Pardee-buying experience has been a positive part of it, from our sales counselor, Maria, to our construction superintendent, John Randall, and customer service representative, Bill Bruce; they all have gone above and beyond to make sure that we have been taken care of every step of the way," Sharon Gavin said.

Pardee Homes offers move-in ready homes at its neighborhoods valleywide. For more information on available inventory, visit pardeehomes.com or call an online sales counselor at 604-3332. You can also find Pardee on Facebook at fb.com/pardeehomeslasvegas.

Pardee has built homes and communities for more than 40,000 families in Southern Nevada since 1952.

Priced from the $140,000s, every new home includes Pardee's award-winning LivingSmart standards that help conserve energy, improve indoor air quality, save water and reduce consumption of natural resources, according to company officials.

Pardee neighborhoods now open for sales include Ashwood at Nevada Trails, Montclaire in Henderson, Solstice in Aliante, Solamar in Vista Verde, Riverstone in Prescott Park, Serrano in Mountain's Edge and Trail Ridge at Blue Diamond Road and Durango Drive.

Sales office hours are 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday and 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday