An email i nearly sent to a new home builder... but wimped out...

twirlypinky

Running_Horse wrote: »

A search on Rightmove brings up 304 three or more bed houses in Sittingbourne, from as little as £100,000. That's an incredibly high number for such a small town; more than twice as many as Cambridge which has double the population. You would have to be nuts to pay a new build premium in this local market.

Which, i suppose, is why we'll never sell ours. We're never going to get out of this place, we're never going to have room to have babies, we're never going to live any nearer to work and we're going to die in this stupid tiny one bed hole in sittingbourne.

I realise thats a rather bleak outlook but that's how i'm feeling today.

kittyggirl

They have thrown these houses up so quickly, it's scary. All concrete stairs too which surprised me, i thoguht they were wooden!

twirlypinky

kittyggirl wrote: »

They have thrown these houses up so quickly, it's scary. All concrete stairs too which surprised me, i thoguht they were wooden!

Er? Echo echo echo echo echo

funkyparott

I guess they build them as the OP described because people are paying for them. They wouldn't be in business if it was any other way.

I personally don't understand why anyone would pay for a new build (give you can get a much larger older property for the same money. But then again thats my personal opinion and I'm
sure that may new build lovers equally hate the older style houses ! )

pinkteapot

Look at these butt-ugly monstrosities going up over the road from the 1990-built estate I live on:

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/new-homes/property-26936638.html?premiumA=true

For £20k less than this we bought a 1990 4-bed detached with a garage and a lovely garden that isn't shaded by surrounding houses. It needed a bit of a refresh - new paint, carpets and bathrooms. We're keeping our spend on doing the place up to £20k so we don't spend more than £250k on the place in total.

God knows who is buying these. "the provision of mews-style parking to the rear of the properties" - in other words, plots so small they can't even fit in a driveway for each house.

We did look at newbuilds (not the above) when buying but on the new-build estates near us they weren't building any detached houses, only town houses which we didn't want. Means they can cram three times as many houses into the same area and make more £££. Some friends rent a flat in one of these estates and (1) the area is kind of eerie and soulless and (2) parking is horrendous - there's barely space for residents to park let alone visitors.

twirlypinky

Good lord, they're horrible!!

I'm loving the "utilitiy" what a joke, it's a washing machine cupboard!

sonastin

Parking has been my biggest issue with the new build estates that I've looked at. The roads are all bends and dropped kerbs so that there is nowhere to park on the road. And the driveways are only big enough for one car. And most households in the areas I've been looking at are 2-car minimum. Just weaving round the chicanes created by residents forced to park on bends in the road is enough of a challenge. As pinkteapot say, visitors need a park-and-ride scheme from the estate entrance!

twirlypinky

Exaclty the same for the estate i'm unfortunate enough to live on. Luckily our neighbour doesn't have a car, so we've got an informal agreement for me to park in his space, otherwise I'd be playing a daily spot-the-space game.

hudgebadger

twirlypinky wrote: »

We're a young couple wanting to start a family and we just laughed at that house. No way would we buy that to start a family in.

The walls are too thin
the rooms are too small
the ceilings are too low
the loft is too small (especially if you wanted the option of extending into it)
the garens are miniscule, forget the garden if you want a conservatory
they're regularly lounge-diner which i detest
there aren't enough parking spaces, most families have two cars, the roads are never wide enough to be littered with cars
the build qualitity is often poor, and getting the builders back to fix the items on your snag list is impossible
they depreciate in the first two years
they're overpriced in the first place
you'll need a 20% deposit if you want to get a mortgage on one
they're too close together


I could probably go on.

I will also add

No choice of heating systems (always GCH), I would love to see a developer opt for greener technologies.
No rain water harvesting systems
No solar panels
No wind turbines
No smart energy systems in place

Sorry to rant, but with prices on domestic fuel not getting any cheaper these options should be there for people to be able to help cut their foot print and also cut their out goings

I would love to see plots of land sold rather than houses. I can then build what I want, and not what is pushed onto me!

twirlypinky

Er, hate to disagree with you, since this is all about disliking the new builds, but some of them do have solar panels. Although, the same house also had an enormous hot water thing in the airing cupboard which suprised me as i thought all new builds had combi boilers.