Thread: Builder Accepted Our Offer, then Reduces Base Price

Hey everyone,

This is my first post on this forum. I have a concern about an offer that we placed on a new construction home this past Sunday. We got an email from the builder's agent today stating that our offer was accepted. We were so happy and excited, because we thought we were getting what we believed to be an awesome deal.

A little background info: we had been negotiating with the builder since 1/15/12. Our original offer was for a different model. We asked them to contribute more than the $10K for closing costs that they were offering as their incentive this month. In addition, we also asked for a discount on the sales price after all the upgrades we were getting. They came back and counteroffered with an extra $7,500 at closing, but nothing off of the sales price. That was disappointing. But then we realized that if we considered getting the model above this one, a lot of the things we were getting as upgrades came standard in the higher model. So we started over and put in a completely new offer on the next model. We asked that they give us the same amount they had offered in closing costs ($17,500 total) and then asked for half off upgrades up to $50K, because we knew that this was the promo they were offering in December. For January they had changed the promo to half off only $25K worth of upgrades. Well, today they accepted, and we were ecstatic.

Then tonight, in all my excitement, I log on to the builder's website and head on over to the model floorplans for the community we were now excited to be a part of. Imagine my heartache when I saw that the base price for our model in the SAME community had been reduced by $25K!!!! Now, I know that many of you might be thinking that maybe we still made out because they DID accept our request for December's promotion. I wanted to believe it, too. But I did the math, and at the new lower base price, with all of the upgrades we wanted, the house would STILL be cheaper even if they had only allowed us the half off of $25K instead of the full $50K. It's cheaper by about $7K.

Our EM deposit was $1,500, but I'm pretty sure that we can get that back if we decide to walk away because there is a clause in our contract that says we have 3 days from the time of our offer to back out of the contract if there is anything that we don't like about the community's HOA. Tomorrow would be day 3, so if I need to negotiate, it needs to be resolved tomorrow.

So my questions is this: how should I go about this? I don't want any bad blood between us and the builder, but at the same time, $7K is a lot of money to just leave on the table. We are first-time homebuyers, and while we do have a realtor, I would still appreciate advice from other realtors, buyers, sellers, basically as many people as possible. We really love this house and don't want to put ourselves in a position where we could end up hurting our relationship with the builder, but we don't want to feel like we've already lost equity in a house that hasn't even been built yet. Thanks in advance.