Arizona Part IV (the conclusion)
So, we went back to the hotel room to think about our decision and decided to purchase the house that would be ready in August. We are having a baby and it is due at the beginning of November. A baby and moving would just be too hectic. The November house had a view of the desert (via view fencing) and the August house had a view of a power pole and a cinder block wall. We were up the next Wednesday morning and headed to the bank to open a bank account. We needed a check to write for the earnest money (we had already written our last check to the other builder for earnest money). After opening the bank account we headed to the builder at 10:00 a.m. to buy a house. Pulte didn't open for another 2 hours, but our Realtor explained our situation and they were really nice and didn't call in on a conference call that was scheduled for 10:00 a.m. in order to help us. Gabe really, really wanted the view fencing, so we ended up buying the November house. We will be living in an apartment until our house is ready. Gabe and I made a deal though, he has to unpack the house and I get to point :) We filled out everything in around 20 minutes and next we needed to head to the design center to customize our home. Before we could head out, we first had to cancel our contract with the other builder. Derek spoke with our Realtor and went to work on his day off because he just knew that we were going to purchase the house. Once our Realtor told him no, we stopping by to cancel our contract, Derek was no longer so happy. He left the office and said that we could deal with someone else. So we went in and told them that we would like to cancel our contract. The lady said ok. I asked if there was a paper that we needed to sign and she said no, verbal was good enough. What is it with these people and verbal agreements...they don't even keep their verbal agreements! I told her I would like it on paper. She said she though that she could print out a form. She did and as we were signing I noticed she stated that we gave them $0.00 in earnest money. I corrected her and we fixed it. When we asked for our check back (they never accepted or declined our offer officially) they had already sent it off with our contract. They were not supposed to do anything with the check until something was decided. I think that we pretty much called their bluff. I believe they thought that they "had us" since we were leaving the same day. Oh well, too bad for them (I just checked and the house is still listed for sale). We made it to the design center around 12:15 p.m. They didn't think that we would finish our customization in time since it normally takes between 4-8 hours to complete. We did it in about an hour. This was a very good thing since we had to catch a plane and the designer had a 1:00 p.m. We left at 1:20 and apparently the 1:00 was running late and called to say that they would be there around 1:30. I don't know who you are, but thanks for running late. We made it to the airport a little after 2:00. Our flight was scheduled to board at 3:20, but it ended up leaving an hour late. The point is that we made it! Everything fell into place or we would not have a house being built. That is basically the very long story of how we went on a week long trip to purchase a house and ended up doing it in the last 5 hours of our trip.