Panic? Building not as described.

david89999

At last at the age of 40 I have just raised my left foot to the first step of the property ladder. By that I mean I have just paid £1000 to reserve off plan a George Wimpey house in Kent. The house is a 3 bedroom detached (called the Mayfield) looked at the brochure, layout looked good, so we went and viewed one that had been sold and was awaiting completion. On that viewing, everything seemed as it would expect to be. Our particular concern was the third bedroom, as we have lived in a house with a shoe box third bedroom for 15 years. The stated dimensions on the brouchure, and repeated on several websites are 3m x 3m (9'10x9'10). The brochure gives a disclaimer about measurement tolerances of 50mm. The bedroom in this house seemed quite ssubstantial, and gave us no reason to think the dimensions given would be anything other than accurate.
The problem:
Yesterday we went and forked out £1000, non returnable, to reserve a Mayfield. Signed various bits of paper, now on a 28 day exchange of contracts. So far so good, very exciting, very happy.
We then asked if we could just go and have another look at one, to see if there was any info we could take away for planning our move etc. George Wimpey kindly agreed, and took us to one in the later stages of completion.
It was then that I discovered that the third bedroom in this one, was much smaller than the one we had already seen, and measurement confirmed that it was in fact 8'x9', quite a substantial difference to the advertised dimensions, as you can see, and not much bigger than what we are trying to get away from. The salesman seemed very surprised, and has promised to check with the contractor. I also checked several other dimensions, and saw that they were smaller as well. (Beyond the tolerance level given)
My question: What rights do I have? It seems to me that I should be able to rely on information provided by Wimpey. What if the dimesnions on our new build are all smaller than they are advertised?
It may be a lot of worry for nothing, in that the builder may have made an error with the second house we looked in, but my wife and I have worked so hard to get to the position where we can move, I don't want it spoiled.
Any advice would be gratefully received. In fact if anyone has a mayfield could you measure your third bedroom for me please?!

Rick62

It sounds like they could be in breach of the Property Misdescriptions Act 1991 which dictates that property descriptions must be accurate including that measurements should be within a tolerance of 10 cms (which they have volantarily reduced to 5 cm).

First check all the measurements, is your particular one being built yet? Then you have to decide if you want to proceed or not. If not you could request (and maybe go to small claims court on the basis they were in breach of contract and the 1991 Act, although I'm not a lawyer and court is always risky) that they return the £1,000. If you do want to proceed I would get some further written assurances about dimensions or if the sizes are going to be smaller you could try to negotiate a discount.

scope

I asked a similar question about a week ago, although be it for an older property, but I suspect the rules are the same.. From the replies I got had I got the feeling there isnt much you can do.. In your case I am fairly sure they would refund the deposit if you want to pull out..