New House Build - Scotland

greytroot

Any thoughts?

Bought a new flat last year, June 2005, for completion November 2005. Once I had paid my deposit the proposed completion date was changed to February 2006.
During December that changed to 24 March 2006 despite me asking to be in by 20 March 2006.
Last week heard from my solicitor that it is now 7 April 2006 (due to the wrong type of bricks used!!!?????) and today have now found out there is another delay and it is now 14 April 2006 (easter friday don't think so). I asked for a reason this time and was told it was because of the snow, which lasted 24 hours and did not stop any other building being done on the rest of the site.

The company is quite unhelpful which seems to go right through their whole staff.

Am i right in saying that in scotland the seller is not held liable for these delays at all.

jenza8

Certainly in England the seller is not legally liable for any delays and I think the same is true for Scotland. Check your contract with your solicitor but I would imagine there will not be a legally binding completion date on it and it will state that they will only legally have to let you know a date two weeks before completion (which obviously doesn't give you very long to organise things - day off work removal van etc). If your contract does have a completion date on it then you're laughing but I'm pretty sure it won't or they would be sticking to it if they possibly could.
Our new build house was delayed by 4 months and legally we did not have a leg to stand on but we wrote to the director of the company and received over £1000 to pay for rent after we had moved out of our old home. I think we were very lucky to receive this but it's worth a try, go straight for the directors, avoid customer care because like you've found already, they aren't very caring!
As for the snow affecting building, we were told that bricks should not be laid if the temperature is 3 degrees or below because the cement does not go off as it should, having said this they're still building on our estate at the moment and the brickie was there on Saturday, in the snow, letting his young daughter lay the bricks and point up!
Good luck, hope there are no more delays.