Buying off plan

WeAreGhosts

I thought the whole attraction of buying off plan meant the buyer could change things (within reason).

have a reservation on a new build (it's just a pile or rumble at the moment) but the company (a small one, but well established) say i can't even change the location of a socket without incurring a fee. and they estimate the fee to move a socket to be £150 per socket.

have i been totally taken in by property programmes when they are singing the praises of new builds and buying off plan or are these fees to move things (just moving something, not adding on) out of the ordinary?

Surrey_EA

That sounds a little excessive.

However, house builders are not quite as accommodating as many buyers would like them to be when it comes to buying off plan. Moving walls and changing kitchens can seem straightforward to a buyer, but could likely involve a lot more work for the builder, which they are understandably reluctant to take.

I've found that the smaller builders will be more flexible, but will generally want to see a financial commitment or even an exchange of contracts before making changes.

Having said that, £150 to change the location of a plug socket seems like pi$$ taking.

WeAreGhosts

Surrey_EA wrote: »

That sounds a little excessive.

However, house builders are not quite as accommodating as many buyers would like them to be when it comes to buying off plan. Moving walls and changing kitchens can seem straightforward to a buyer, but could likely involve a lot more work for the builder, which they are understandably reluctant to take.

I've found that the smaller builders will be more flexible, but will generally want to see a financial commitment or even an exchange of contracts before making changes.

Having said that, £150 to change the location of a plug socket seems like pi$$ taking.

I thought it was a pi$$ take at first too, I actually laughed, good naturedly, at the woman. They're also going to charge me for moving a BT phone point from one room to another as I don't want one in the master bedroom.
If I were talking about moving walls and kitchens I could understand there being something to pay, but not sockets!
What also peed me off was the woman was all smiles when I asked about the option of moving things around a bit - sockets, tv points etc- saying that it was "absolutely fine" only to be told about "fees" after they had got me to sign up. i'm thinking thank goodness the reservation is refundable!

Kat88

It's fairly standard for new build builders to charge for moving things, the fee for us to do so was £90 per a socket so £150 seems excessively high. I assume it's because they figure as with all the added extras that they can make a bit of profit. It's annoying but as I say pretty standard, in the end we decided not to move ours as we could work around where they put them. Think about whether it's essential to move sockets, remember with phone lines you can buy wireless handsets now, it may save you money over the long term.

BlueIsTheColour

We bought new recently, not a national house builder, extra sockets were £49 for single, £59 for double I think. We didn't move any, just added them. They had a price list for extras like sockets, phone points, serial sockets, loft lights etc...

All had to be agreed before the roof was on, they also wanted paying by then, we hadn't exchanged at that point so the solicitors argued for a while & in the end we paid it on exchange, a few weeks after they'd wanted it...

Whilst it's not cheap & I'd question again, think of hassle adding new sockets after the fact. Yes you could have extension leads etc but that's less than ideal.

I'd see what you can negotiate as part of your 'deal'.

Good luck!

HereHareHere

it's costing us £50 which allows us 6 socket moves, this is with a fairly large developer. I think it's £60 for a new socket.

A lot of the options are overpriced though and annoyingly they won't do anything not on their option list