Heard of Susan Miller? Well if she tells me that mercury is in retrograde and I shouldn’t sign a contract… then I am going to do just that!!! Call me superstitious… but such has been my experience.
So it all started in May. We were house hunting. My first priority was a “new home” so obviously our search was concentrated in the Frisco area. After some driving around, browsing on the Internet and info exchanges at the watercooler, we zeroed in on Stonelake West, a Grand Homes community. Here’s the timeline:
May10th - Visited the community; enquired about “Montebello Platinum E” plan. We loved the curved staircase and open floor plan. Seemed to fit our needs to the T. But what we overlooked and the agent pointed out was that the kitchen was small – like a galley kitchen – I was looking for something bigger with an island. We were then shown the other platinum series plans and really liked the Cypress.
In fact there was an inventory home available in that community with the Cypress floorplan.
May 17th - After a week of discussions and finding comps in the neighborhood (all done online), we placed an offer to build a Cypress plan on an empty lot. It looked like all went well.
May31st – We had our first design meeting at the Design center. T’was a bad start because the agent refused to be there with us (in her defense, it was a Saturday and hence the busiest) and somehow it bothered us, as until then she was our only point of contact and we felt kind of left out. Anyways, we went through all the options and were alarmed by how much it was going to cost us.
We went home that day feeling really disheartened and duped. The price we negotiated in the offer sounded good, but we didn’t realize at that point that it was only for the empty frame of the house. Not for the picture inside. --- See that’s why it pays to have a buyer’s agent. We really truly felt the pain then. So we tried to contact some realtors to get a second opinion.
June 7th – Second design meeting. This was to finalize our choices and pay up 50% of the options money. Actually we were asked to pay the entire amount, but we negotiated 2 split payments. As you can imagine, we were totally unsatisfied with what we had signed up for by this time.
June 8th - We spoke to 2 realtors about our contract. They said it was a good deal. Mind you, not a “great deal” nor a “horrible deal” but a “good” one.
So I guess that put us on an average. It relieved our pressure a little to know that we were not completely fleeced by Grand but hold on that’s from when EVERYTHING started going south.
June 9th – We were in a dilemma about laying engineered hardwood through most of the lower level. We were priced at 8k. If we didn’t get it done with Grand then maybe we would get a better deal outside, but the thought of putting it in the mortgage was more attractive as compared to waiting for a few months (I bet it would have taken us a year) and then getting it done outside.
So, we visited the design center again and finalized our hardwood selection. We sent them an email to confirm our request for hardwood in the designated areas for a price of 8K as per their quote.
We were told that after our sign off on the options, it would take from 2-4 weeks for Grand to apply for a building permit to the city of Frisco following which we could schedule a “builder meeting”.
July 1st – So Grand was on schedule when we received a call from the agent saying that the permit was approved and we could set the ball rolling by scheduling a meeting with our builder.
July 16th – We had the meeting with the builder. All our options were kept on display and we went through the all the items on the list. That’s when we discovered that the hardwood selection was not included at all. So after all the hassle and convincing, Grand completely forgot to add the hardwood option to our PSA. Great!
After the usual round of apologies, we were told that the hardwood would be added back. And then came the bombshell… The builder mentioned something about the permit not being available as yet…What? I thought this meeting was scheduled only after we confirmed that the permit was on hand? The agent said it was definitely approved .. there just some delay in getting the approval papers on hand. Ummm that didn’t convince us much. I had alarms ringing all over.
So when we got back home, my husband found the frisco city building permit office’s website online. They have a wonderful search tool that gives you the status of a building permit application for a given address. And guess what we found? The application was denied. Oh wait, there’s more. There was also a record of a denial back in November for the same plot!
We called the agent and she very sweetly told us that there was some issue with the plat – it looks like the area was initially an easement, but with a new community coming up on the other side, there was now a road leading to the new community and so this plot was a valid area to build on – unfortunately the city of Frisco does not agree as they still had the old plat graph.
Whatever! All I want to know is, Why were we told that the permit was available?
Howcome all this information was not shared with us until we asked?
The Division Coordinator(DC) replied that Grand thought it could “take care”of the issue and so didn’t feel the need to share it with us and that the false update on the permit status was a miscommunication issue.
In the meantime, we received an updated list with all our options (including the hardwood) and it was like a cherry on top of all the cream! We were overpriced for the hardwood – what was quoted as 8k was now 12k. Excuse me???
I was so mad at them, that I asked to terminate my contract immediately! I was asked to send in a written request, which I did on Aug 14th and in the meantime the sales agent worked with us to see if we could find other suitable properties with Grand. We toured 3 inventory homes but nothing proved feasible to us.
Again we were told it normally takes 2-4 weeks for Grand to process a refund check. So I waited patiently until 4 weeks were done and called the agent to inquire about the refund check. She said that she heard from the DC that the “check had been cut” and should be in the mail anytime.
Come 5th week, no luck. At this point, I was so frustrated, I started calling everyday and left messages. None of my calls were answered. Finally after a week, I was able to catch the agent on line ( as she didn’t answer my calls and voicemails on her cell, I called the desk number of the new community she was working in) and asked for an explanation. She wrote out an email to the division coordinator and still we waited.
And then, I called the division corrdinator’s desk number continuously until she answered and asked her about the check. So the truth was, the check hadn’t been cut as yet. In fact the refund hadn’t been even approved. She understood how “at the edge” I was, and promised to get it done ASAP. She asked me to call back in 2 hours. I did and was told that she had the approval and had forwarded it to the accounts department for them to write out the check and that it would be ready the next morning. I offered to pick up the check the next day as I didn’t want another week of delay while we waited for it to show up in the mail. So we agreed that I would be in their office at 2pm the next day to collect the check.
Sept 18th - Next day, I was there on time but as fate would have it, I was told that people in the accounts department were all out for lunch and were actually expected back at 1:15 and they were still not back. So I was asked to wait for sometime. I did so for an hour. The only thought in my mind was “Grand was surely an easy environment to work in. Who would allow employees, who work on a 9-5 schedule, an extended lunch for 3 hours? That too on a Thursday!Wow!” As expected, the division coordinator came by at 3PM and told me that she had no clue why the account guys were not back, apologized and asked me to call, confirm and come by the next morning.
Sept 19th – I called the division coordinator at 9am, confirmed that the check was there and then drove out to their office and picked it up.
Wait, its not yet a “happily ever after”. The check came with an accompanying letter stating the reason for refund and to my surprise it said Grand was returning the money because we could not get financing. OMG!!! How many more hoops do I need to jump through????
It’s a miracle I kept my anger in check. I pointed out the clause and the DC profusely apologized and said it was from a template and hand edited the clause to say that the refund was because of lot issues with the city of Frisco.
Now I really believe this is the end of my saga.
The check has been deposited and I have found my peace. On reflection, I realized we signed the contract during a mercury retrograde. Susan Miller always cautions her readers on astrologyzone.com to avoid signing contracts during one.
So I really do not know if it was just Grand Homes’ service that sucked BIG TIME or was it the retrograde?
– now I’ve got a logical explanation for this: Noise levels! (Ha ! so happy I could redeem myself)
