Offer on a new build that the builders just can't sell?

pickled_cabbage

I wonder if I could pick your brains?

A few months ago we saw a house we liked - but there was a massive problem. Basically, there is a Tesco quite near and they have planning permission to develop their car park which will - quite literally - engulf the building development almost entirely. It put us off putting an offer in.

Also, there's planning permission to build a church next door (actually, a few doors down).

Now, we were put off considerably by the Tesco - but since then we have been bombarded by the developer trying to sell the properties - and none have sold since. The houses themselves are really nice and well-priced, but we think the Tesco issue is putting everyone off. We get around 4 letters sent to us a week - 1 phone call a week - and typically an email every other day. It's clear that the developers have made a massive screwup with the location.

So my question is this: given that there is about to be a significant development which would substantially devalue the property, what do you think the developer might do in this situation? Is it worth being honest with them and saying, look, we know there's a massive development which is putting people off and it's going to hugely devalue the property - and then coming in with a really low offer?

The supermarket thing does concern us but - for the right price - we'd happily tolerate it. Are house developers generally willing to negotiate down significantly in this situation (e.g. we think that on a house for £400k it's probably going to knock £100k off the value).

As mentioned, the house will be almost surrounded by the car park.

poppysarah

You might but if you needed to sell it, would someone else?

Caveat_Mortgagor

Wow! You would pay £300k to live in a car park!

I'd want the moon on a stick for that amount of money.

Tea_Pea_Dee

Caveat_Mortgagor wrote: »

Wow! You would pay £300k to live in a car park!

I'd want the moon on a stick for that amount of money.

Free, gratis, zilcho money required. Glad to have been able to assist

shegar

Surely 300k would buy you a nice home .......somewhere other than living in a car park, you will have cars and lorries turning up from stupid 0 clock in the morning to dark 0 clock of a night.....if it went for 100k that would still be too much for me.......

Idiophreak

People live by car parks. If the property's the right price, people will buy it.

If you're willing to pay the lower (eg 300k) price, there's no reason to assume someone else wouldn't in a couple of years....

myhouse_2

Idiophreak wrote: »

People live by car parks. If the property's the right price, people will buy it.

If you're willing to pay the lower (eg 300k) price, there's no reason to assume someone else wouldn't in a couple of years....

A very dangerous way of thinking in my opinion.
But if the price is right - personally it would take more than 25% off to persuade me, but if it were 250k, I can see I might be tempted.

poppysarah

I'd want it so cheap that it wouldn't matter if no one else wanted to buy it when I was fed up with it.

And fed up I imagine you'd be pretty soon.

pimento

I'd love to see a link...

moneybunny123

Sorry to hijack but an almost identical thing is happening to us.

We'd (verbally) agreed to part-ex our current home on a lovely newbuild. It is in a great location, large, tucked up the culdesac making it safe for our young children and best of all it had a partial view of a lake that is about 500yards away (no danger of flooding before you ask, as the house is elevated). We've paid a £500 reservation fee on the plot, had it surveyed and our mortgage approved and were about to tell our solicitor to start searches.

Anyway, whilst near the site the other day we noticed that the land between our plot and the lake was being bulldozed and looked like it was being prepped for building and the trees that separate the housing development and the strip of land have been pulled down. Smelling a rat, we went and asked in the sales office who said they knew nothing.

We got home and did some googling and searching on the local council site and discovered to our horror that the strip of land has planning permission for a restaurant and childrens play barn. We're quite sure that our view of the lake will now be even more limited (if not blocked out altogether) and that the side of the restaurant and its carpark will be right next to our plot. And potentially, all the nasty things that go with it - cooking smells, staff outside smoking, noise, cars leaving at all hours, skips full of food, rats, flies, noisy children arriving for parties.

Or it could be absolutely fine, and not cause us too much trouble at all.

What do we do?! Do we negotiate a lower price with the builders? The houses have been selling like hot cakes due to its lakeside location even though only a handful of them actually have views of the lake. Do we walk away and thank our lucky stars we found out before it was too late, or before we'd paid out for searches, etc?

The most frustrating thing is they'd agreed to give us almost full market value for our house that got no interest when on the market (albeit for only 2 weeks, as the EA we were selling with made the stupid decision not to market on Rightmove). But we would be willing to remarket it again at 10-15% lower than market value to make it sell - BUT there are still no guarantees are there?

We've seen another house we really love, but what if that's no longer available when (and if!) our house sells? We'll have walked away from a PX on an otherwise fantastic house (minus the planned restaurant).

We really don't know what to do.

Sorry again to have hijacked. I may start my own thread.....

RecoveringAlcoholic

I have friends who have lived in Tesco car parks.