Thanks, Thomas, Stan, and Keith for your timely and thoughtful
advice. Right now, we are trying to decide what we should do, and all
of your comments are really helping us to make this very important
decision. This afternoon, we received 2 calls from the salesman's boss
and 1 from the VP of Finance for the local branch of Pulte. At the end
of the 2nd call, the salesman's boss started to flag and said, "Maybe
Pulte's not the right builder for you." He also seemed to start to take
back the tile we'd been promised everywhere except the bedrooms; but
after I got angry, he called the salesman and said we were getting the
tile.

At this stage, we thought about hiring an expert to evaluate the
materials in the home, as well as a real estate lawyer to put clauses
in the escrow contract to ensure that if we don't get what we paid for,
we can back out without penalty (or they'll have to reduce their price).
(We're scheduled to come back in and sign the escrow contract this
Friday or Saturday. but we haven't selected either, and I don't see
how we can get both experts by that time). We'd also like the real
estate lawyer to read the sales contract, when we close on the house.

By the way, I'm a little confused. Is the escrow contract (in Texas,
if it's different there) different from the final sales contract?

As far as a buyer's agent goes, we tried that a couple of times. The
first time, we negotiated a 1 1/2% rate, because we did all the
legwork. All we really needed was someone to let us in to the house and
help us with the contract itself. Still, this buyer's agent apparently
wanted more than 1 1/2%, and lagged on putting the bid in, thus
costing us the bid. Once we found another house (through our legwork)
that we wanted, we found another buyer's agent (like the first,
recommended by the National Association of Buyer's Agents), who pushed
to put in a bid that was $10,000 - $15,000 higher than the bid which we
wanted to put in (based on our legwork at the tax assessor's office).
We terminated that relationship as well. We've found that the "Buyer's
Agent" designation is no guarantee of quality, even when they're
recommended by the best buyer's agent organization we know of. As for
foreclosures, they're really too risky for first-time homebuyers,
because of possible lien-related complications. As for existing homes,
that's what we've been looking at. However, in the course of looking
at existing homes, we came across these new homes, and we really love
the neighborhood, but we're not sure we really want to put up with the
BS from this builder.

Any further advice, anyone?