Designer moved the primary bath after the slabs were cut, seven weeks gone

I operate three floors below this, small multifamily, so take the scale difference into account. But the pattern is one I recognize. Every time I've let a design opinion arrive after rough-in, the cost was never the change order. It was that the change order reopened decisions I thought were closed, and two more followed it.

Ask the designer, in writing, whether this is the only layout change she'd make. If she has three more coming for the kitchen and the stair, your 84k is the first installment and your Thursday decision is really a decision about the whole scope.

Basic question and I'd rather ask it than nod along. When you say float, do you mean slack in the construction schedule before the loan term runs out, or slack before the spring listing window? Because those are two different deadlines and your post seems to treat losing the float as automatically hitting both.

@compass I read it as both, which is sort of the point. He has one buffer covering two deadlines.

Harrow, this thread is doing something to my strategy shortlist. I've been circling luxury flips because the per-deal number looks like three of my other options stacked. And then here's a bathroom layout costing 84k on a Thursday deadline with no data on whether it earns the money back. That's not a scale-up of a 90k rehab. It's another line of work entirely, and the skills don't carry over.

I'm asking this straight, no dig intended. Is the designer's opinion worth 84k because she's right about the market, or because your partner will be unhappy if you overrule her?

The Thursday decision turns on one assumption you haven't tested: your days on market. Everything else follows from it.

At 22,900 a month, seven weeks is about 37k. That number only holds if the sale timeline is the same in both scenarios. It usually isn't. High-end buyer pools are thin, so a luxury property can sit far longer than a mainstream house at the same time of year, and each month of sitting costs you another 22,900. If the wet room genuinely shortens exposure by two months, it pays for itself even at 84k. If it shortens exposure by zero, you've bought a nicer bathroom with your entire margin.

So the question for your agent isn't whether buyers at 4M expect a wet room. It's what happened to the last few comparable listings in that submarket. Ask for the sold list above 3.5M in the last 18 months with days on market for each, then ask which of them had a reworked primary suite and which listed with a dated one. That is a small sample and it will not be conclusive, but it replaces a slogan with something you can weigh against 84k.

Two other things. Your 785k trend against a 720k budget already tells you the contingency is spent before this change order, so the 869k figure is your real base case, not your worst case. And confirm the extension terms with your lender in writing before Thursday, because a point on 2.1M plus a rate bump on a post-Labor Day listing is a materially different decision than a point on its own.

If the sold data doesn't support faster absorption, the defensible move is holding the layout and putting the 47k toward things every buyer at that price walks through.