Off-plan not built to advertised plan

Leo2020

dumpallhere wrote: »

Sorry but you have made yet another assumption!!

The "site plan" only shows the location of the different types of houses spread on the site. It doesn't provide any plot specific architectural information for the various house types e.g. - which Loxley will have side windows and which will not!

I was thinking aloud - (my assumptions) based on the location of the Loxleys within the two blocks of properties shown as currently on sale on the builder's website.

Browsing through one of the other documents I did find the following clearly stated - "Please note that windows on the side gables are only applicable to plots overlooking public realm".

You say that it is only your plot that doesn't have side windows and all the rest of the end-terrace Loxleys have side windows. Looking at the site plan I am wondering if that is indeed the case!

Rather than admitting you are wrong you now accuse us of lying. I can back up my husband and say that they other Loxleys have windows. But maybe you should visit Brearley Forge in Sheffield to take a look for yourself.


Your comment about making an assumption is silly. dumpallhere could not identity if, it is not an assumption but a statement of fact.

You are blaming us for not being given the full plot information, the sales advisor should have given us the full plot information. I doubt you will admit it, as you are keen to blame us, but not being given the full information is not our fault.

Leo2020

littlesparkles wrote: »

I was just having a guess but having looked closely at the site plan I now think your plot is 42 and here are my reasons:

It's the same way round as plot 40 although you would expect it to be the opposite. The window side is joined to the neighbour by an alleyway with the upstairs floors joined (to a Weston) so I think some windows are potentially there on the ground floor (as the sales rep seemed to suggest you would lose only two).

Has someone already bought the show house? Could this be an option? On my site one show house was sold off mid build.

I would like to hand you a prize for guessing which one it is, some of these will have to do:D:D:D. But if you didn't know one was different would you have guessed? I don't think it is obvious unless you know that you are looking for an "odd" one out. Especially when you are only given the basic layout we were given.

Windows into the alleyway would be odd as that is the neighbours alleyway not ours.

The show home is not for sale as yet. The build is still in the first stage, so I imagine it will be left as is for a while. Keepmoat are also building other houses nearby, I would guess they would keep the Brearley Forge showhome open for these because the other building plots are fairly small. Basically the council has knocked some of it's houses down in spits and spats across Southey/Parson Cross. The house we are buying is on the biggest area but the others you can probably only fit a handful of houses on.

My husband is planning on going down today so see Mandy, I don't know as yet if I want to go. Her email is fairly clear that she doesn't give a stuff so I'm not sure what the point is. But we will report back when one/both of us has been.

dumpallhere

I was / am not accusing you of lying. You have had the benefit of having seen the site, I do not. Wondering something or thinking aloud doesn't necessarily mean that I am accusing you of something.

In my first response in the topic I enquired whether the sales rep. had shown you the architectural layout for the plot or not, or if you had asked for it. Because that's how it works when buying off-plan - at least that has been my experience with the builders I have been to. You see the architectural plan, you are satisfied with what you see regarding that specific plot, you reserve!

I made the effort to look for the planning documents and the details hoping to offer a helping hand but guess it is not working.

All the best. I hope it works out for you.

Leo2020

As you can probably tell I'm not in the best of moods. I got your posts and Thrugelmir posts confused so I thought you were trying to justify that because it is not detached that is why it is the way it is. So my response was more snappy than it should have been.

Sorry, yes I appreciate you were trying to help with the planing documents. I wished we had been shown these and explained where windows/doors would be right from the off. Unfortunately we can not go back in time.

If all the Loxleys were like ours I wouldn't have assumed ours would have side windows. I know assuming is not the best thing to do. I would normally tell other people off for it. But when buying off plan and being shown a layout with side windows, only seeing other Loxleys with side windows and being told by Mandy that the showhome was just like our house (the showhome has side windows)... Well I think you can understand why we thought what we did about the plot we were purchasing.

Leo2020

Hi,

Sorry for the very late update but things have got on top of us over the last few months.

The meeting with M and her manager S did not go well - M became aggressive and S within a few minutes of me walking through the door was shouting at me. I recorded both conversations but not the part where S started having a go at me - I had only just walked through the door and not had chance to set my phone recording.


The final part of our story:

"Our Sale Falls Through

Although not Keepmoat’s fault that the buyer for our current home pulled out they would not give us a reasonable amount of time to sell the house. We asked for a couple of weeks, which bearing in mind the 3 week delay caused by Keepmoat’s inability to organise the sale of our house under their EasyKeys scheme, I did not think that this request was unreasonable. Their answer – you have two days or we put the house back on the market.

We sell the house to another buyer for 81k, our house is worth around 93-95k but we have no choice otherwise we the lose the Keepmoat house. 81K only covers our outstanding mortgage and early repayment fee, we don’t have enough money in the bank to cover a deposit and solicitors fees, surveys, etc. We arrange a loan from family to cover the remainder we need.


We need to complete by the, 27th September, 25th October, or maybe the 31st of October, or maybe never?

On the 17th of October we are are told that we need to complete by the 25th this is then changed to the 31st. However our solicitor reassures that he has already spoken to Keepmoat Homes’ solicitor and that we can not complete by then because our buyer can not complete yet. He advises that Keepmoat’s end of year is the 31st and this is why they want to complete then – it is basically just a scare tactic used by them and they won’t really pull out. The estate agent is being pestered by Keepmoat to get us to complete by the 31st or they will pull out. However, the estate agent thinks it is also a tactic and they won’t really pull out. At this point we have had no direct communication from Keepmoat since the 17th.

On the 17th we are also told that our solicitor was faxed on the 3rd and 4th of September about a completion date of the 27th of September. However, our solicitor never received these faxes and it took until the 17th of October for Keepmoat’s solicitor to chase this up. I find it very odd it took their solicitor 6 weeks to chase this up, especially when were apparently due to complete two weeks earlier. But as the house was not even ready then, and it had still not been signed off on the 17th of October it was impossible for us to complete on the 27th of September. Keepmoat’s solicitor implies that Keepmoat are being generous when they extend the deadline to the 31st of October, I think giving us only two weeks notice of completion is unfair (Home Builders Consumer Code says we should be treated fairly).

We then find out on the 5th of November, via the estate agent again, that Keepmoat Homes have sold the house to someone else. We only found out because the estate agent is chasing up us and Keepmoat for a progress report. It seems odd that Keepmoat have not told the estate agent to stop marketing our property and waited for the estate agent to contact them as they are paying their fees as part of EasyKey.

Keepmoat insist that they told us on the 1st of November that the house was being re-marketed. Later on we are sent a copy of this email. Unfortunately Keepmoat managed to send the email to the wrong person as they have typed in my husband’s email address wrong. The incorrect email is actually a valid email address so someone unrelated to this knows what happened with our house sale. Great way to break the Data Protection Act Keepmoat.


Can we have the house?

Our solicitor advises us that if we can act quickly Keepmoat Homes might still sell the house to us. It takes our buyer 3 weeks to be ready to exchange but we ask Keepmoat anyway as it would be unlikely for the other buyer to be ready to exchange already – searches are taking around 2-3 weeks and you have to draw up a draft contract before you can complete searches anyway. We ask Keepmoat and get told we cannot have plot 42 as they are now selling it someone else.

Keepmoat make no real effort to sell us an alternative plot, they say they can move our reservation fee to another plot but do not tell us which plots are available. I would have thought as we are ready to buy a house now they might have had least tried to talk us into buying another property, but instead they seem happier for us to walk away."


Our mortgage adviser, solicitor and estate agent have never known anything like it. Our estate agent said she has never known a home builder pull out when so near to completion, even when there is a few week delay, it just doesn't happen - but it happened to us. My husband as estimated our costs to be over £2000. So we are over £2000 down and have nothing to show for it.

We have created our website as a warning to others, so hopefully no one else will go through what we did.

[Deleted User]

Take Keepmoat to Small Claims Court to recover your losses.

Leo2020

We can complain through the NHBC as Keepmoat should have followed the Consumer Code for Home Builders. This code says we should ask the Keepmoat to resolve the complaint first before escalating the complaint to them.

We are giving Keepmoat a chance to reimburse our costs first - we are waiting to hear what they say.

I don't know if the complaint would stand under small claims court as they did give us an expire date for our reservation (albeit with only 2 weeks notice).

Both our heads are pretty frazzled right now. The last 5 weeks have been the worse. Were not sleeping right (although I'm sleeping a little better because it is now all over), we have been constantly been worried about whether we would get the house or not.

We had put up with all the crap Keepmoat flung at us because we wanted the house, we had even thought of other potential problems that Keepmoat might throw at us but we just never thought they would sell the house to someone else.

Leo2020

UPDATE: My husband posted our website on Keepmoat's facebook page over the weekend. They responded and wrote someone from their Customer Care Team would contact us. I'm not holding my breath though.

[Deleted User]

What is your web site?

jazabelle

Wow, they'll appalling. Good job highlighting this. Look forward to updates.