Barratts Delaying Exchange of Contracts

ztan

Lydia I think it's safe to say that the developers are the ones who have put pressure on to complete, so when you hand over your money and documents in good faith, to then have them sit twiddling their thumbs, it's a tad frustrating.

I completely understand the OP's p.o.v.

It is true, they may decide to take forever and ever, but it's unlikely. I personally am an optimist and tend to think of my glass half full, and my house nearly ready, instead of nowehere near finished and a potential thorn in my side.

Milliebear, a lot of developers will delay exchange until they have a fixed completion date. That may well be the case for the OP. As for mortgage expiry- personally my mortgage offer doesn't expire until Nov 2012...

As for the build quality of houses, I think after 8 years Barratts may have improved- and there's always a bad side to every developer. There's no point in putting the fear into the OP re their developer now. That's not helpful.

Richard_Webster

There may be nothing sinister in it at all - usually merely an admin foul up where they haven't supplied the right paperwork to their solicitors.

Mind you, I once did a new build purchase and kept asking the builder's solicitors for the planning permission. They said they hadn't got it and were getting it from their client builder. I just assumed that the builder had forgotten to send a copy to their solicitors. Then the solicitors admitted that there was no planning permission. The Council would not issue it until the builder had supplied some more details.

jsteph28

the reason i have to exchange so quickly is because Barratts set a deadline of 28 days, which i have worked too and have managed to stick too. My mortgage does have an expiry of Jan 2011 so am keeping an eye oin the date, although im not to worried about it being completed in time as this develepment has has gone up very fast.

sonastin

They can't hold you to a deadline if the reason that you aren't ready for the deadline is because they haven't provided information on time. If they try to enforce their date, its a good opportunity to remind them that you are waiting for them...

F_T_Buyer

jsteph28 wrote: »

the reason i have to exchange so quickly is because Barratts set a deadline of 28 days, which i have worked too and have managed to stick too. My mortgage does have an expiry of Jan 2011 so am keeping an eye oin the date, although im not to worried about it being completed in time as this develepment has has gone up very fast.

Ignore that deadline. It means nothing, nothing at all.

I think I missed mine by about 10weeks, but I wanted to delay exchange.

Edit to add, the developer is not going to lose you in this market. Just don't worry, and I wouldn't hurry to exchange.

milliebear00001

ztan wrote: »

Lydia I think it's safe to say that the developers are the ones who have put pressure on to complete, so when you hand over your money and documents in good faith, to then have them sit twiddling their thumbs, it's a tad frustrating.

I completely understand the OP's p.o.v.

It is true, they may decide to take forever and ever, but it's unlikely. I personally am an optimist and tend to think of my glass half full, and my house nearly ready, instead of nowehere near finished and a potential thorn in my side.

Milliebear, a lot of developers will delay exchange until they have a fixed completion date. That may well be the case for the OP. As for mortgage expiry- personally my mortgage offer doesn't expire until Nov 2012...

As for the build quality of houses, I think after 8 years Barratts may have improved- and there's always a bad side to every developer. There's no point in putting the fear into the OP re their developer now. That's not helpful.

There are a myriad of reasons not to exchange without, or with a very long, completion date, and very few reasons to do so that are to the buyer's benefit. Your mortgage may have an expiry of 2012, but that's very rare, and doesn't mean your lender couldn't pull their offer it whenever they feel like it, or that your financial circumstances might not change in the interim resulting in a withdrawn mortgage offer.

I'd say, hold off exchanging until you have an exchange date that is within a few weeks of completion - just like most other house buyers. There are good reasons why this has always been the traditional manner of doing things. A developer knows buyers are like hen's teeth in the current market. They should be bending over backwards to please you, and you should be dictating the terms of exchange, not them.

ztan

Well, sorry everyone, but we've just had confirmation from our solicitors that the developers solicitor have exchanged.

We're happy. If the house was half built, we wouldn't even be thinking about exchanging. But then neither would the developer I doubt.

We're on the countdown- looking at about 25 days until the house is ready and that's including getting NHBC sign off. However we are still on "completion on notice".

As long as you have a good relationship with your developer, then you should be fine.

Ours knows we don't take rubbish- and they also know we make up to 3 trips a week to view the property and see what progress is being made. We even bullied them into redoing the rear render as it wasn't to scratch- infact it was so bad it wouldn't have made sign off.

As long as they don't think you're easy, they won't push things too far. Ours has been delayed by additional plumbing we wanted put in, and by the fact they have yet to finish the driveways around us- so we'd have nowhere to park!

Hopefully the OP is due some good news soon!

mark5

I'm happy enough with the build quality of my barratt house built in 2006, where they let themselves down was in sorting out minor faults. Our house was built under the supervision of a really good site manager (neighbours have said he sorted all faults asap) he was replaced by a waste of space by the time we completed.