Contract FINALLY ratified!

I believe the last time I posted I talked about how they were trying to take back some of their incentives ($5,000 back at closing) and we weren't having that.. so we basically continued the process including the per-construction meeting before the contract had even been signed by the regional manager.  We were about to pack our things and send our money elsewhere because it should not take someone 3 weeks to sign something that was promised...

About two weeks ago we heard that they had FINALLY decided to sign the original contract... so that was frustrating and of course pushed back all the expected dates.  

The new dates are:  

Start digging - April 3rd
Anticipated closing - June 20th

I'm not going to get my hopes up about the closing date.  Our current lease ends on May 31st so we're really hoping things will move along.  We are hoping that our current house will let us go "month to month" come June but again, we're not going to get our hopes up... especially since they didn't allow us to do that last year.

Anyway, we drove by our lot today and saw that they had put out posts marking where they will be digging.  Also, our PM sent us a picture of our lot :-)

Our lot is pretty much behind that fire hydrant.. so the first black tarp thingy you see is marking where our driveway will be.  I love that there is a farm behind our house :-)  I'm hoping they wont knock those trees down.

Updates/colors!

Well, It's happening.  They are "taking back" the $5,000 at closing that we originally signed on.  Our SR is fabulous and is doing the best he can to "fix it" though.  He gave us three options which were:

1. wait to ratify the contract until flooring and wiring upgrades...apparently it may fix everything and we wouldn't need to change anything.  Still not quite understanding this option though.

2. Lower the sales price by 5K and not take the 5K at closing.. which we need.

3. Do the financing through our outside mortgage company who came back with better numbers monthly and at closing than NVR and we still get all the other incentives such as the morning room, granite, and hardwood floors, etc. 

Obviously, the third option is what we want but the third option is also the last option that RH will most likely approve.  Our SR said he would have to go to bat to have them settle outside of NVR..  We met with our SR yesterday to compare NVR's numbers and our outside mortgage companies numbers and he kept saying that they were too close in comparison so that it wouldn't get approved.. until my husband explained to him that the numbers he was looking at included the 5K in closing that they WERE going to give us.. so in the end the different was 10K at closing.. which is SUBSTANTIAL (at least to middle income families -- like us).  He was going to get back with NVR's loan officer and they were going to try and work something out, if they can't then our SR is going to fight for us to keep the incentives and use our outside mortgage company.  I'm still not going to get my hopes up for this though.. 

After discussing that mess, we went ahead and chose our exterior colors.  We chose:

 

Siding: Irish Thistle 

 border: White (can't remember appropriate jargon for the border)

Shutters: Black

Door: Marooned
Brick: As shown, I can't remember the name

We're hoping the colors are the same as this house:

 

I'm really nervous about the Irish Thistle color!  I'm hoping it turns out dark like this.. It's just hard to compare it when your looking at a small color swatch. I'm fine if it turns out to be a gray color but I do NOT want it looking tan or white.. I want the darker gray / green.  Extremely nervous about this!

Do any of you know any bloggers who chose this color?  It would be awesome to see another house with the same siding color.