<p>More on the Spanish Bungalow project. </p>
<p>Buyer released all contingencies in our contract on Friday. And the Buyer submitted her increased deposit to escrow via cashier’s check. We are now past any backing out and her entire deposit is non-refundable. As her agent said… ‘we are married now’. There is a special amendment that immediately releases the deposit to me if Buyer cancels or does not perform for any reason. No signature required from Buyer (I insisted on that… a lot of things go south and then you cannot get the Buyer to sign anything (cancellation document, release of deposit document, etc) and you are just stuck stuck stuck in limbo</p>
<p>Buyer has made over 12 changes to original Scope of Work this week. I get to spend all my time documenting changes, determining cost of change and finalizing an Amendment to the contract after her review. It’s just a bunch of headache I am not used to managing. Also, I am driving my construction crew crazy because I have to make them stop work and go over the changes with them and then I put them on the spot to tell me ‘how long will it take you to do X?’. The whole pricing of these changes is just a crap shoot at this point.</p>
<p>The sales price is fluctuating so much because of these changes that we have determined that the additional dollars need to be tracked outside of escrow. She is getting a loan for 50% of the purchase price and banks are not happy when the Sales Price in the original contract is different when they go to draw loan documents at the end of escrow. We might have to start all over with the loan process. So, the listing and buying agents will keep track of my final documents and the running additional amount. Buyer will give the Listing Agent a payment outside of escrow and agent will review everything at the final walkthrough on her behalf (she will be back in Pennsylvania). Then he will give me the check outside of escrow.</p>
<p>Buyer hired some fancy ‘Color Specialist’ to help her select the new exterior colors for the stucco bungalow. The lady came and I got to spend one hour with them painting swatches on the outside of the house. Had to distract the crew to come out and paint swatches. I didn’t say a word, but the color was horrific - mustard yellow stuff. Luckily the Buyer vetoed the color and we had to start all over again. Meanwhile this ‘color specialist’ was telling the Buyer that we HAD to use Dunn Edward paint because it was the only company she trusted to come up with ‘true colors’. What the hey??? Of course the Dunn Edward paint costs about $10 more per gallon than my budget and I was just tired of the whole change order money thing. I wouldn’t be surprised if she pays some kind of discounted wholesale cost for the paint and then is selling it to us at the retail cost or something. I did explain to the color specialist that I used Behr paint and I get a 15% discount and it is significantly lower cost.</p>
<p>So, after color specialist left I told Buyer that I would go to Home Depot and bring some paint samples of things that I liked just to let her see more choices. Went to Home Depot at 8pm Friday night (how fun is that?) and got 6 more samples. Showed up early Saturday and had to pull the crew off to paint all the samples per a detailed diagram I gave them because I had to rush over to Project #2 to meet with owners all Saturday morning. So far I have now paid for construction crew to paint samples for 2 1/2 hrs.</p>
<p>Returned to Spanish Bungalow project at 1pm to find Buyer had brought some of her own new samples. Had to pull one crew off to paint those on another area of front of house (another 1/2 hr). She had picked peach/salmon color combination (yuck yuck yuck). It was immediately obvious that those colors looked like some Ooops paint from Tijuana. Luckily I didn’t have to say anything because the neighbor from across the street came over (and his house is a gorgeous restored Craftsman with a beautiful color combination) and just barfed all over the peach/salmon stuff. She trusted his opinion.</p>
<p>Now it’s 2pm and she informs me that she has invited all her friends over to help pick colors. Ten people arrive and it’s a group grope committee discussion about the paint colors. I stand there for another 2 hours. In the end they all decided that my color combination I brought from Home Depot was definitely the most ‘sophisticated’ and they talked Buyer into being more sophisticated rather than Terracotta/Spanish bright colors. On and on this went.</p>
<p>Just as we are wrapping up and her friends are all moved inside to give her opinions on all the changes she should make to the house, along comes ‘Color Specialist’ out of her car with a new set of color sheets for Buyer and different ways that the accent pieces on the house should be painted. Thank God the Buyer finally told her that we are going with ‘X’. But this dragged on for another 1/2 hour.</p>
<p>In the end I spent a total of 5 hours on this paint fiasco - the colors I would have painted the house myself if it was a flip ended up being the color she wanted, my crew had to waste about 3 man hours painting swatches and we are back to using my Behr paint at my cost.</p>
<p>I went into the garage for a break during all this and the plumber and drywaller guys said ‘You have the patience of a saint’. I guessed they noticed it was quite a lot of chaos going on out on the front sidewalk.</p>
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