NEWS FLASH: We decided not to buy the homes at the lakes

It's a long story lol, but we cancelled the homes at the lakes.

This is an overview of the most important reasons:

--> At the time we purchased the home (Feb 08) the housing market was in despair and that was a "good time to buy". However 5 months later, the economic situation has changed dramatically. It is very clear that the US economic system as we know it (spending, credit, borrowing, not producing) will cease to exist. The price of a home should have that negative downturn already factored into the price. For the home on the lakes that was not the case.

--> While the home prices of all other homes in Maricopa imploded, the price on the homes at the lakes stayed the same. While the lowest priced homes were selling for 130 000 5 months ago, you can buy your Maricopa home from 80 000 and up now. There at least 38 homes for sale under 100 000. And that number is increasing on a daily basis. Most homes are in the 1400-2200 sq ft range. The cheapest home (on a per sq/ft basis) was a 2450 sq ft home for 98900. We don't feel we are getting a good deal at the lakes now.(price wise)

--> The perfect financial storm of wealth destruction. All assets are losing value due to inflation and the low dollar: stocks, cars, homes, ... Americans are becoming poorer, not richer. That will affect their sentiment and their consuming frenzy. When they all decide to stop consuming... at the same time, the economic disaster will be UNIMAGINABLE.

--> The difficulty to access credit. It was very hard for us to get a loan because of the tighter lending standards. We were able to get a loan but the cost of that loan has gone up at least $4000. This does not take into account rising interest rates. If you want to understand what the US economy is going through and want to understand why it will get worse, read this interesting article.

--> There are many lake lots left and the builder has bought 470 extra lots on an auction from their partner builder that went bankrupt. It is very probable they paid peanuts for those lots, so they can sell the houses they are going to build at lower prices.

--> This can happen too:


--> Interest rates have gone up from 5.5 to 6.5% and are now breaking out to multi year highs. This made our loan 60 000 dollars more expensive over the time of the loan. This will have a destructive effect on home prices in the future.

--> Our builder worked with lousy contractors. I can give you 10 examples of that but I will show only this one, which in fact makes me real mad. And I don't get mad too often. Low bids, shouldn't be lower level results.

Example: On the left handside you can see how the home should be painted. On the right handside you can see how they painted the house. They made a mistake, the third front wall whould be dark brown instead of lightbrown. No problem everybody makes mistakes.

So they repainted the home... this is the new result:

Incorrect again, they painted the 2nd front wall dark brown. Can you believe that? This is even easier than the painting I did when I was 5 when you had to color numbers that corresponded with colors. They only have 2 colors, how can you f*ck that up.. TWICE???

We "lost" our earnest money, but the builder told us if we could use that money on a future purchase with them. For Europeans it is unimaginable that you can have a company build your house and then say "I don't want it". Unbelievable but true. They also told us they would call us when they were going to lower the price on the home.
We'll be renting our home with pool for the near future.