Hehe, so I've been bombarding HB lately with posts about our current house (that is sold and set to close 1/7 - and I completely believe it sold so quickly based on all of your great advice about staging and whatnot!) and the neighbor's tree drama and then the one yesterday about the dark trim in our potential home.

We went and looked at the house with the dark trim yesterday and I actually decided I liked how the trim worked throughout the house even though it wasn't what I had been envisioning. This house was the model home for a new development in an area that is about 10 minutes from where we currently live. (We would have loved to have stayed in our same zipcode, but unfortunately NOTHING that fits our needs is for sale. We have to be under contract by today in order to avoid renting.)

Anyways, I say it was the model home because they switched architects because they decided that the style the first architect was using was too boxy. And they're right - it is. It certainly isn't as cute as our old (well, current) house is but it has 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, just under a 1/4 acre. It's a new build, has granite, nice light fixtures, beautiful floors, huge master suite, a loft, laundry upstairs, open floor plan, etc. So everything inside is exactly what we've envisioned (minus the white trim ) but yesterday as we drove away we couldn't get over how it just isn't super attractive outside and when you're putting down a lot of money - you want it to feel like it's an attractive home, am I right? We told our agent to tell theirs that we thought they shouldn't be charging as much as they are since they had agreed (and said themselves) that the exterior design wasn't attractive enough and that we were looking at building somewhere else next year.

Well, the builder's agent just called our agent and said they are willing to swap out all appliances for brand new stainless steel, finish off the fencing (it's complete except for one side and also needs a gate), and will completely do the back landscaping and sprinklers. They are sending over an offer right now.

That is, obviously, pretty huge. These are things we were going to have to do ourselves and I had casually mentioned them in passing to the builder's agent yesterday as things we were keeping in mind financially.

But my gosh -- does this complicate things! We were contacting rental homes today and now I feel like we're staring down a really great offer for us financially. If we were going to build brand new ourselves, it would cost us at minimum about 50k more. The house would probably be quite comparable inside but would have white trim and a nicer exterior - and that's it! Oh, and we'd have actual neighbors. In this house, we would be bordered by 3 model homes - I guess we wouldn't have to deal with the neighbor issues we currently deal with.

Anyways, thoughts?? I'm trying to wrap my mind around this and DH and I are discussing constantly trying to determine what to do. Pictures below of the exterior.