Update:

We're not getting the house after all. I'm really disappointed, b/c that is the only floor plan I've seen that I loved and had all and then some of our criteria. The general location was great too, although the actual location wasn't quite what we wanted, but we were willing to sacrifice. Anyway, the builder wound up being a real jerk. The boss kept changing things on us, and went back on the contract we'd signed. Decided he wanted another $10,000 down in earnest money. Now, if he'd been up front at the beginning, we might have gone ahead, but they were very deceptive, and I've learned since then that they tend to do this bait and switch type thing instead of letting you know up front. We farted around with that for over 2 weeks and we finally actually met with the boss who was mostly concerned about where we're from and didn't even know where the West Coast was. He was acting very "disgusted" about it. When we sat down with him the first thing he said was "talk to me". What? SOOOOOO unprofessional. I felt bad for the sales agent, he really did try and wanted to keep the deal and thought they would honor the original contract, but they didn't and although I could have fought it after reading through the fine print and knowing we were in the right, why? It would be too time consuming and there's no way we could trust them now. We asked for our earnest money back and walked away. I guess it wasn't meant to be.

I'm now on the house hunt again. There's another builder in the same neighborhood that we're thinking of going with, they actually use the higher end stuff in their homes as standard, but I just don't like their floor plans as well. The positive thing about them is they are up front about what money they'll need based on how we proceed. They also will custom build their plans to fit our needs, but that does require extra money. Another positive is that their floor plans allow for more yard space. We liked one of the plans that was around 2400 sf, but I didn't love it. There was no entry, just walk right in the living room which I hate, plus there was no 4th bedroom. Those were the main things that I really didn't like. If we got that I'd have to share the upstairs game room and also have that converted to a guest room. We'll see, the price is definitely right, and we wouldn't have to ask for many upgrades since they come with most of the ones we like.

Since I'm not sold on it yet, I'm also looking again and lived in houses. I called the realtor again last night with a large list, so tomorrow and friday we're going to be going out again house hunting.