Potential Persimmon Home Purchase

littlekirsty

Hey everyone,

I'm looking to purchase a persimmon home. The site I'm looking at is releasing phase 2 at the start of the summer and apparently if I'm organised with my mortgage ready to go, know what type of property I want to go for etc I'll stand in better stead to purchase a property (according to the site saleswoman). As a first time buyer this is exciting but I want to make sure I have all the information in order to get the best deal.

For example, if a house is priced at say £160,000, is this negotiable? Are you able to haggle to get things like integrated appliances included at a reduced price (or free)?

Has anybody had any dealings with companies like persimmon and can give me any advice with anything to do with the buying process?

Thanks in advance!

Kirsty

AndyT678

My general advice for what it's worth:

The saleswoman is just that. She is not your friend and her job is to gouge as much money as possible from you.

Anything with a price is negotiable, in theory. How sucessful you'll be will depend a lot on how their sales are going. Build a rapport, ask for things don't demand. Find out when the company's year end / quarter end is.

When you make a deal stick to it but don't let yourself get pressurised into something that you're not comfortable with. If you're feeling overwhelmed take a break, tell them you need to sleep on it ir something. Ask for advice from friends, relatives or on here.

New houses come at a premium - accept that you'll pay over the odds and that if you buy early you could be living on a building site for months or even years.

TCPPC

im in similar position, do you negotiate straight away or after getting the all clear from the lender?

Deakun49

I am in the same position currrently and it is difficult to negotiate. I have just asked for £2000 off what they asked and am now kicking myself because I know that I should have asked for 3000. I had planned to ask for £3000 off her price but she rather caught me off guard as I was just about to email her. But it is a learning curve and it is my first purchase of a new house.

gazter

littlekirsty wrote: »

Hey everyone,

I'm looking to purchase a persimmon home. The site I'm looking at is releasing phase 2 at the start of the summer and apparently if I'm organised with my mortgage ready to go, know what type of property I want to go for etc I'll stand in better stead to purchase a property (according to the site saleswoman). As a first time buyer this is exciting but I want to make sure I have all the information in order to get the best deal.

For example, if a house is priced at say £160,000, is this negotiable? Are you able to haggle to get things like integrated appliances included at a reduced price (or free)?

Has anybody had any dealings with companies like persimmon and can give me any advice with anything to do with the buying process?

Thanks in advance!

Kirsty

Get a comprehensive snag list done. If you know a local builder ask them to go over everything as soon as you get the keys.

Once Persimon Homes have completed the development and left the site they aint coming back.

dgtazzman

Be friendly with the sales staff on site, but don't let them walk over you. If they tell you something, don't just swallow their sugarcoated drivel, do your own research. You want to keep it civil, as you might need things from them, but realize they are there for their commissions, not to solve your problems.

Don't feel pressured into using their financial advisers and certainly not their solicitors. I would think you using a solicitor recommended by the builder would actually pretty much be one large conflict of interest for the solicitor, you are relying on these people to pick up things that are wrong and inform you accordingly. The tied in financial advisers aren't by definition bad, but there might well be better deals out there if you go elsewhere.

It is easier to haggle on extra's, rather than on price, as this will mean the 'sold' price that is registered will remain at the level the builders want. Getting carpets and turfing included is pretty standard, other extra's are getting harder to get by the day, because of the boom we're at the beginning of.

Get an AIP on a mortgage before you go in, that way you know how much you can potentially borrow. I wouldn't get the sales staff the details of this AIP though, just tell them you have one and know what your limits are. If you tell them too much, that gives them room to exploit that information (i.e. talk you into buying a more expensive home you didn't really want).

If something happens in the process, get onto the site staff and keep on at them till a solution is found, don't just let them get off with 'it will be ok'. Back up communication at least with emails as much as possible, so there is a paper trail.

If you are in a position to, keep an eye on the build progress. For example, we were told we would complete before Easter, when I looked at the state of the build, I challenged this, low and behold, a few days later Easter had turned into mid May, if I hadn't taken action, we might have ended up homeless next week as we'd given notice on our rental.

If you can't get extras included in the sales price, don't bother having the builders arrange them, get your own trade in after completion, it will be at least half the price of what the builders will charge you and probably will do a better job too.

Best of luck, I thought buying a new build would be an easy process, boy, was I wrong...

Mynxmox

Hi, we bought a new house through Persimmon. Price was not negotiable and was bought off a plan. The house as completed late by about a month. No compensation for that although we negotiated for lawn and paving and a fence to be erected at no cost to us (it could be seen as compensation really).

We could choose the finishings from a small available range to personalise the home, which was nice. You basically just get a shell and have to fit carpets at your own cost or live with bare concrete floors and light fittings. (Make sure to allow for that in your budget).

8 years later we sold the house for what we paid plus what we spent to improve it (we added a conservatory); so not made any profit. I suppose it depends on the location where you buy how your value will be affected.

Persimmon was very good with after care; came back promptly to fix multiple little snags until I was happy with everything.

Make sure you read the fine print - our house was part of a development that had a specific style, so we could not even change the front door for a number of years - as per contract.

And yes, all the building rubble is worked into the garden and then covered over with lawn, so for years to come it will cost a fortune to get a decent garden going.

But it is great to be the first occupants of a brand new house!!

Good luck.

kitty_kins

Hi

We are also FTBs and buying a New Home (ours is from Bloor). Unless they tell you otherwise, the price is negotiable (somewhat).

Our house was listed as £255,950 as it has 2 Juliette Balconies looking over the park. However, as that pushed us over the £250k Stamp Duty bracket, our estate agent asked if that price could be negotiated down to £249,950 so that we only had to pay 1%, not 3%. Bloor agreed and we are just waiting to exchange contracts now

This did mean we weren't able to negotiate free white goods, carpets etc. but this negotiation has saved us more money in the long run. It's also worth mentioning that our mortgage is one of the Help to Buy mortgages, where the government loan 20% of the value and we put up the 5% deposit, so our position was not weakened by this

Hope this helps!!

gazter

kitty_kins wrote: »

Hi

We are also FTBs and buying a New Home (ours is from Bloor). Unless they tell you otherwise, the price is negotiable (somewhat).

Our house was listed as £255,950 as it has 2 Juliette Balconies looking over the park. However, as that pushed us over the £250k Stamp Duty bracket, our estate agent asked if that price could be negotiated down to £249,950 so that we only had to pay 1%, not 3%. Bloor agreed and we are just waiting to exchange contracts now

This did mean we weren't able to negotiate free white goods, carpets etc. but this negotiation has saved us more money in the long run. It's also worth mentioning that our mortgage is one of the Help to Buy mortgages, where the government loan 20% of the value and we put up the 5% deposit, so our position was not weakened by this

Hope this helps!!

No vendor ever expects a property listed at £255k to be bought for a penny over £249.999.

clairetori

we exchanged contracts on a persimmon home a couple of weeks ago. the development is really popular and we couldn't negotiate on price or any extras (we managed to get a couple of things because the dozy sales woman showed us the wrong plan so had to honour the things on it!). the houses on the next 'phase' being built don't include a number of things that ours does, one of those being fencing around the back garden! the staff at our sales office are useless, are always getting things wrong or have absolutely no idea when you ask them a simple question. if you stand firm from the beginning and make sure you e-mail to confirm things just in case (e.g. she promised us these extras so i e-mailed playing dumb just to get it in writing) then you should be ok. we've been to see our house once (the bricks are up to one level at the moment) but that was a right palava as when they took us the first time they could only show us it from a distance... so far away that we couldn't actually see the house. if you're not happy, make sure they're aware of it - i'm not rude to them at all but i'm at the stage now where i've realised they're no longer doing me a favour. i'm paying a lot of money for the house and i expect them to update me on any progress, answer any queries and let me see the house! we chose a house off plan, used 'new homes mortgages' through them and their solicitor - if they didn't give us a £500 incentive to then i'm sure we would've steered clear. however actually both have been helpful, the solicitor has been very good and things seem to be ok! the solicitor has even put little pointers to be aware of when buying a new build or from persimmon directly which i thought was quite helpful - it reassured me that we weren't being duped and that they were being relatively impartial!! good luck! please post your progress - it'd be nice to know how other people are getting on!! x