What to look out for when buying a new home

Not all developers are the same. There are bound to be significant differences between large national companies worth billions, who use much contract labour, and smaller firms with their own more stable work force and connections to outside contractors.

But even within the same organisation there can be quite marked differences between sites, depending on the effectiveness of management.

One of my close relatives works on the management side and he's recently moved from a larger contractor to a much smaller outfit, because he could no longer maintain the standards he was used to achieving. He'd become disillusioned with the quality of labour supplied and the constant re-doing of work that was not completed properly first time around.

But how to sort the wheat from the chaff? Hopefully, someone will come along and give you some pointers. I'm sure there are some good new builds out there, but I'd not buy new myself. I like to see how an area of housing has shaken-down as a community, because that's the other 'known unknown' with new build estates.