Small world of warning - Minto's sales team isn't exactly in sync with their design center
TL;DR - I was iffy on the kitchen in a new build and the sales rep talked me up about how I could upgrade it no problem. Only to be told at the design center that I could make absolutely no changes to my kitchen layout whatsoever.
Maybe this whole thing is fairly obvious to someone who has bought a home before, but as a first time homebuyer this took me by surprise. I was looking to purchase my first home from Minto, and their Avenue townhomes really appealed to me from a price perspective for a single guy looking to buy his first place. However the kitchen was quite small. Basically an apartment sized kitchen. An opening that only accommodates a 33" fridge, just one cabinet width of counter space on either side of the oven, and an island.
I don't need a massive kitchen and I know the limitations of my budget, but I did want a bit more. I mentioned the kitchen being a bit small to the saleswoman and she immediately put my worries to rest by telling me that this would be absolutely no problem to change. She even started laying out all the things I could do with the design center, like extending the kitchen into the dead space of the living area by adding more cabinets and counter space, and even talked about how I could get them to install a pantry cabinet and expand the fridge opening to have nicer appliances.
It all sounded great, and she talked to me for several minutes about the benefits of extending my counters and how all these things that I wanted could be handled by the design center, easy! Just an upgrade fee here or there.
Well to my surprise, when I went for my design appointment and mentioned to my design specialist that I wanted to expand my fridge opening from 33" to 36", she looked at me and said "we can't make any changes to your layout". I was pretty surprised, since it seems like a pretty easy change to make, but she reaffirmed no, absolutely no changes could be made to the kitchen layout in my home. I then asked about the counters, and she said no, those couldn't be expanded either under any circumstances.
Needless to say it was pretty disappointing. I'd been working under the assumption that I would be putting some extra money into the kitchen to make it a bit nicer for months, only to be told that under no circumstances could I make any changes when I finally showed up for my appointment.
Maybe I shouldn't be surprised, after all I'm buying a "poor person home" from a corporate builder, but I figured the sales team wouldn't misinform me so much. It likely wouldn't have changed my buying decision if I knew the truth, but it remains disappointing, even if it's saving me thousands of dollars. Just thought I'd share here in case anyone else gets misled by a sales rep.