Can we make offers for buy off plan?

wsharp

bigkevgray wrote: »

If you do buy a new house make sure you carefully inspect the property from top to bottom and consider employing a snagging company to do this for you. I bought a Wimpey home and the quality is poor and there customer service is poor.

Kevin - www.bewareofwimpey.com

Thanks for the link, it even directed us to many other websites. Tried to see the Persimmon's link, but didnt work.

Feline_friendly

Just remember that people only shout up when they have a complaint and rarely do so when they are happy...that goes with everything..so although you will see horror stories for Wimpey, Barratt, Persimmon, etc..compare this to how many homes these companies actually sell. On my Wimpey development alone there are 85 houses of which 3/4 are already biult and i can find no where 1 single complaint about this development. I have so far been very impressed with the service from them and their site manager is very helpful too.

My friend lives on a Wimpey development that was biult 7 years ago and she has nothing but praise for the company.

So dont be put off completely by horror stories..and do plenty of research.

Richard_Webster

poppysarah wrote: »

When did they buy offplan? 4 years ago?

Do tons of research. List every new build development within a mile or two of you. Look up sold prices on houseprices.co.uk (by street or postcode) and then see how many have resold (ie: repossessed) - visit them. See whether you actually like the areas - have people settled in well, or are there lots of empty properties (bought by BTL/spectulators or REPOS) - are the streets all finished and adopted by the council?

Collecting the figures in a sensible way could also be a brilliant bargaining tool when you come to buy - so perhaps consider printing prices out, creating stats etc (Can you tell I like playing office!) -

House prices have fell 17% in the last year - the recession is now upon us and isn't going to get better anytime soon. You've got to consider your own financial position, as well as that of the builder.

Also go view some old-builds. See lots of different styles of houses so that you can see which you realy like best. Visit all the new build showrooms. Take brochures and info (Stick them in your folder)
Get property bee for rightmove- and see what prices are really doing in your area.

Sensible advice.

Arrive at what you really think the property is worth if completed now and then knock off a further discount to allow for negative price movements in the period before the house is finished. The attitude almost has to be to the builder that no sensible person is going to want to buy off plan in the present market so they have to give you a further discount to tempt you to do this.