edge homes Horrible business practices - Vineyard, Utah

I would like to share with you what recently happened to my wife and I as we attempted buy/build a home with Edge Homes.

We looked around at various builders and felt at the time that it was 6's.  Some offered lower prices, but upgrades cost more.  Some offered more incentives, but at initial higher prices.  We struggled with the pro's and con's of each, debated various points, stressed over such a large decision, and in the end we decided to go with Edge Homes.  We felt confident that we had picked a reputable company, one that offered a good product at a fair price.

We found a lot that we really liked in Vineyard and made the huge decision of putting money down on it.  We got a check over to our agent on Friday, June 1st. We had a handful of floor plans we were considering, a list of upgrades that we could afford, and were starting to allow some of the dreams of living there to seep into our minds.  We were quite happy, nervous, but happy. 

Our thought, and what we were told, was that the money reserved the lot for us and that our offer would be considered first.  So far so good.  Except it wasn't.  This is where we started to get ludicrous pressure to pick a floor plan.  On Friday evening we were told that we have to pick a plan in three days. We asked if that meant three business days.  Apparently, it didn't.  We were told to have a plan picked out by Monday or risk losing the lot.  We stressed over this, and raced all over Utah and Salt Lake county looking at various lots. 

We went to Lehi, Springville, Herriman, Eagle Mountain, Spanish Fork, American Fork.  We went to nearly every development that is currently being built.  We ran into multiple issues of not being able to walk through the different floor plans due to it being the weekend and nobody being available to help us.  We scraped various weekend plans and kept driving, kept looking. We looked into the different schools and communities, the city sports and other activities that living in a particular community more readily afforded us, and came to a decision that we felt good about.

We put in an offer on Monday, at roughly 3PM on the lot, with the proposed floor plan to build.  We made the ridiculous deadline! The only thing we asked was that the builder cover closing costs.  We were willing to go with your preferred lender to get this to happen.  We had even decided that if the offer was rejected we would go with our preferred lender and pay the closing costs.

We were told at 5PM the same day that if we didn't change our offer we wouldn't get the lot.  How is this possible?  We hadn't even received a declination of our offer.  Now we are basically told to cough up another, roughly, $5000 or to pick a smaller, less desirable lot, and that the decision had to be made today.  Another offer had been put in on "our" lot... This was very distressing. Not the fact that we would most likely need to pay closing costs, but that our $500 did NOTHING for us.  We felt cheated, and that the business practice was less than desirable.  We were concerned that it was setting a precedence of other issues coming up and being forced to make snap decisions, or suffer the consequences.

We received a phone call from our realtor at 7PM, just four hours after submitting our offer, informing us that we didn't get lot.  What did our $500 down on the lot do for us?  Shouldn't our offer be considered first, and any counter offer be made prior to selling the lot out from under us?  Edge Homes has no regard for the emotional or time investment that goes into making these decisions.  They are cold.

Needless to say, we are extraordinarily disappointed.  Edge Homes most likely won't notice the loss of a single sale, but they might take notice of bad publicity.