What would you do in our situation?

We bought an established house on an estate where the builder had gone bust and another builder took it over.

The roads were adopted but the open space that was supposed to be landscaped and a children's play area had not happened.

the second builder was nor interested.

Our children had a great time playing on the overgrown 'playpark' there were bushes to hide in, dens were made under bushes ad trees. All the kids in the estate played there. We always knew where to find them.

Dog owners used the area as well.

Eventually, after many years the council took the space over and flattened it, landscaped it and planted some trees.

No places for the kid to play and hide now and it was just a large open green space which held no attraction for the kids.

Sheep wrote: »

The area is lovely. I dont know why you keep bringing the area up Cakeguts. The reason the houses were not selling is simple. The estate doesnt look desireable with the roads as they are.

Twists keep coming daily for us. The builder replied to one of my previous emails this morning to say as they have sold more houses than expected over the last 3 months they may now consider building phase 2.

This isn't the reason why the houses haven't sold. All building sites look like yours and the houses sell. If they can't sell the houses on your estate it isn't because of the state of the building it is because of the local area that the estate is in.

If you like the house itself I would just stick it out. I bought the 2nd last house on my estate, although there was still a block of flats to be built. It was about 18 months - 2 years after I moved in that the "green" area and roads were fully finished. However, we were phase 2 and completed by a separate builder to phase 1.

The older houses and flats were completed almost 5 years before my house so they didn't have a very good time of it. Although the roads were finished and adopted by the council after phase 1 was completed, they were looking at either a builder's yard or an old bus depot that was waiting to be torn down to build phase 2. People who sold on during this period took a big hit on the price.

I would say I don't think that the current state of the roads or the communal space is the reason the houses aren't selling - what you've described is exactly what you would expect a new build estate to look like when it isn't finished. The remaining houses must be overpriced for what they are, or they would be selling.

The road to phase 1 was finished by the phase 1 builder. The properties were very popular, and the builder didn't have any trouble selling them despite the large derelict building taking up the rest of the site. There was then a long-running dispute over the number and design of the properties to be built in phase 2, as the residents of the surrounding original houses were not pleased about a proposed block of flats and apparently some part of the derelict building was of historical interest.

Having read the planning correspondence I felt really sorry for the phase 1 residents who were looking directly onto this building. They had bought with the impression that phase 2 would begin almost immediately but it ended up being 5 years!! Soon after that was resolved the builder sold on their entire Scottish operation to another firm who were able to demolish the eyesore and begin work.

From looking at the sold prices for the phase 1 properties, it looks like they took a hit of ~20% on their original purchase price. Of course, they were bought new in 2006 or 2007 and sold on in the following years so some of the decline would be due to the market changes. I purchased my house in 2012 for about 85% of the price of the phase 1 houses (the same layout, although a different external finish). I did consider purchasing an older one as it would have been slightly cheaper, but then I wouldn't have been able to choose the kitchen etc.

As to why the builder hasn't tidied the place up, there could be a number of reasons. Maybe he hasn't got the cashflow to do it until more of the houses are sold? Or it could be he is worried about construction traffic damaging the road surface and having to pay twice? In our case phase 2 construction traffic only needed to go over a small part of the finished road, which was re-done when everything was finished. Our solicitor also ensured that there was a timetable and money in place for the road to be finished and adopted - I'm surprised yours didn't do the same.