Does anyone want to join me waiting for new build to be built and complete

Hou

Hi all,

Stumbled across this last night and its been some fantastic reading so I thought I would join the club and put up how our purchase is going.

Last July the site we had been waiting for in Leeds opened and we went on the opening weekend to reserve the house we wanted. It is through Taylor Wimpey and is called the Eskdale, 4 bed detatched with detached garage. It was more than we wanted to spend but as it was the opening weekend we managed to negotiate a £4k options voucher to reserve, which they stopped offering any incentives after that. We were told the house would be ready Mar/Apr time depending on weather.

With it being a 9 month build, they knew I was going to hold off on the mortgage and HTB documents as I did not want them to expire, but still got worried when I got a letter stating I had to exchange within 6 weeks of reserving. I was told by the site to ignore the letter and that we would exchange around Xmas.

We got to visit the site at slab level and talk through how the house was being built with the site manager, who was very friendly and answered any questions.

I have since been back at first fix electrical and also to measure up some areas where I will be laying flooring myself. The house is looking well built and they have improved some areas like the location of the fuse box and the slope on the rear garden.

The sales office has been a bit hit and miss with communication. Sorting out the options was easy enough for standard things that were on their list, but special requests like an induction hob was a bit of a pain, where as other builders already had them listed. Another issue was when we asked for a radiator moving for us to put an american fridge freezer in the kitchen. I had to keep chasing to the point where I decided I would just remove it myself and told them to forget about it. On the day of the first fix, head office called to say that doing so would mean my warranty would be void and they supplied me with the solution I had been pushing for over a 2 month period.

The most annoying thing at the moment is trying to get a date for completion as they will not even give a rough date, just that CML is next week. We really wanted to be moving in over the Easter period due to work holidays, but the site seem to be making it difficult whereas our solicitor is hoping to push that date with TW legal team.

It has been a very long wait, and I know that another week or so isn't the end of the world but its so hard when you are so close. The house is finished inside from what I can see and we have given notice on our rental so it has to be within the next month.

I have some pics but cannot post them yet

Haylescom

Have you been for a recent look around Hou? When we went 2 weeks ago our neighbours looked pretty much finished but as the rest is a building site (i.e. no roads) NHBC won't sign off yet. Have they given you a long stop date or date for your new home tour?

Jon_B_2

They only have to give you 10 days notice for completion. There are a lot of inspections and last minute detail for developers to go through to satisfy planning conditions, before they can confirm completion.

IMO serving notice on rental is very risky if they have not even given you a rough date for completion.

Haylescom

Hope it went well yesterday welshdresser!

Chlo88 everyone is still confident we'll be completing on 29th but the hold up is still with the 2 names thing! What I don't get is Charles Church has been part of Persimmon for a good while now so either they've done the deeds differently this time for some unknown reason, or this problem happens all the time! Anyway, there's half a dozen or so of us in the same boat so they're bound to get their act together soon as they're waiting for all our money!

Hou

Hi Haylescom, we went down mid week. Plots 1-5 have already completed and moved in, plot 6-7 are finished and plot 8 (ours) is having all the nhbc/cml checks Monday 14th. Providing it passes, it then goes to the legal team and our solicitor to thrash out a date. Mine is confident that he can hurry the process, but he needs the covernote from TW. I am going to speak to the site manager on Tuesday to ensure everything has passed

Jon B - a massive gamble I know, but it's cheaper to store everything in friends and family's garages, and then stay with parents, than it is to get the 10 days completion notice, and be paying for an empty rental property for 6 weeks

Tygermoth

Whoop whoop Welshdresser - hoping you had a smooth moving in day and all went well.

We are stalking this weekend, namely as we also have our options meeting.

Midweek we received a call from the sales office with an update from the technical team. short n sweet. 'we are looking to redesign the area' thats it, no time frame, no details. As said previously every month this drags on its better for us so we are just letting things progress as they will.

The sales office have advised they will be looking to have more info in our options meeting tomorrow. We are hoping they are looking to split the drive, stagger the garages meaning we get our back door back, side gate and level garden. Saying that on our last visit those walls were already built so they will have to knock down and start again, do they do that?

looking forward to seeing your stalking pics, you all have lovely houses and i like seeing them take shape (as well as your excitement that things are coming along!)

fashionvictim

chlo88 wrote: »

Fashion victim- I know you said they were hoping to have you in for April is that still the time they are saying. Delays must be so frustrating? It's one of the many things I worry about going wrong. When does your mortgage offer expire? At least you know it'll be finished to a good standard and they're not rushing it.

Def not rushing. Our long stop date is now end of April, so they have to finish it but then. I don't know how other builders work but we had been given a build window, but when you read the contract they actually have 6 month from the last day of the build window to complete- this is called the long stop date in our Contract.

Build window was Dec 2015/Jan 2016, so in TW contract long stop should of been end of July 2016.

We negotiated an earlier long stop date, due to our chain complications before we would exchange.

-pete-_2

@Tygermoth, good news! Hope they can make some major adjustments so you get what you paid for.

We've got our options meeting tomorrow morning, a bit annoyed as the kitchen upgrade is going to be nearly £3k and there is apparently no way to swap out the - frankly pretty ugly - extractor for a nicer one without it, even though there is no mention of this in the options brochure and the extra is listed as being only £135.

I also don't think we are going to be able to stretch to get the full height bathroom tiling as that is supposed to be an extra £735 for tiling in our ensuite.

At the moment our shipping list consists of:

• 6 x Downlighters for the kitchen - £60 x 6 = £360
• Outside tap - £90
• Outside light (we might not go for this) - £95

So thats a total of £545 or £680 if we can get them to "allow us" to buy a nicer extractor hood.

We're also going to ask about installing network cables from the living room to the spare room. I do a lot of web work and play a load of video games so being able to have a fast connection to the upstairs office would be handy.

Oh and we're going to exchange on Monday :eek: Does anyone know if they need full proof of the deposit?

visidigi

-pete- wrote: »

@Tygermoth, good news! Hope they can make some major adjustments so you get what you paid for.

We've got our options meeting tomorrow morning, a bit annoyed as the kitchen upgrade is going to be nearly £3k and there is apparently no way to swap out the - frankly pretty ugly - extractor for a nicer one without it, even though there is no mention of this in the options brochure and the extra is listed as being only £135.

I also don't think we are going to be able to stretch to get the full height bathroom tiling as that is supposed to be an extra £735 for tiling in our ensuite.

At the moment our shipping list consists of:

• 6 x Downlighters for the kitchen - £60 x 6 = £360
• Outside tap - £90
• Outside light (we might not go for this) - £95

So thats a total of £545 or £680 if we can get them to "allow us" to buy a nicer extractor hood.

We're also going to ask about installing network cables from the living room to the spare room. I do a lot of web work and play a load of video games so being able to have a fast connection to the upstairs office would be handy.

Oh and we're going to exchange on Monday :eek: Does anyone know if they need full proof of the deposit?

Check what type of downlight you are getting for that. We had £60 for halogen,£63 for LED

Definitely worth the extra - th £735 for bathroom tiles with David wilson includes the bath screen and electric shower - if that's tiles only with TW,ouch!!!

fashionvictim

-pete- wrote: »

We've got our options meeting tomorrow morning, a bit annoyed as the kitchen upgrade is going to be nearly £3k and there is apparently no way to swap out the - frankly pretty ugly - extractor for a nicer one without it, even though there is no mention of this in the options brochure and the extra is listed as being only £135.

I also don't think we are going to be able to stretch to get the full height bathroom tiling as that is supposed to be an extra £735 for tiling in our ensuite.

At the moment our shipping list consists of:

• 6 x Downlighters for the kitchen - £60 x 6 = £360
• Outside tap - £90
• Outside light (we might not go for this) - £95

So thats a total of £545 or £680 if we can get them to "allow us" to buy a nicer extractor hood.

Oh and we're going to exchange on Monday :eek: Does anyone know if they need full proof of the deposit?

I hadn't even considered what the extractor looks like!!

With TW, we paid £170 drawing fee for adding the additional down lights, which they say is because the architects drawings need updating. I don't know if this is standard across all TW sites? Plus per downlight ours were £54 each. Again each site may vary and we chose in 2015 so prices may have gone up?

We are just having full height tiling above bath...so as to use as a shower so is £197 ( of course this depends on cost of the tile you have chosen) could be a cheaper way to go?

Good luck tomorrow!