Sarah M

It's a bit more complicated than that - initially the home was being built on spec (honestly, probably because they thought they had us on the hook), so it was already in stage 1 when we put down the earnest money. We did the earnest money contract with an addendum contingent on them changing the layout of the master bath to include a tub instead of a large shower. They said "that's easy," so we signed.

3 days later we visited the house and they'd put in a tub different than promised -- my thinking is that they didn't want to incur the cost of moving one of the already-framed walls down several inches, and they're trying to tell us "the marble tub won't fit."

I'm telling them they need to either make it fit or we're not closing... and if they don't, it might be worth getting a lawyer to at least get some of our money back. - Fri May 16 2008, 10:55

To answer Terri's questions about the construction stage, they actually haven't even sheetrocked the walls yet, though I'm not sure if the plumbing is done yet in that part of the house (it is in place in the laundry room). We went in to take pictures of the framed house a couple of days ago and discovered the cheaper tub there in place. There's no tile or anything, just the wrong tub sitting there.

I totally agree about the "vested interest" thinking regarding our realtor; we contacted him yesterday to see if he has any ideas.

For now we are continuing to put on pressure, thanks to everyone for your advice! - Fri May 16 2008, 07:54

Lynn, to answer your question, we have a real estate agent who is representing the builder/seller and theoretically giving us a "rebate" portion of his commission at closing.

However, we were too trusting and didn't think it would be necessary to use any kind of escrow for the earnest money. :(

(deleted and re-submitted to change "representing the buyer" to seller... am a bit frazzled today with all this drama!) - Thu May 15 2008, 14:15