Barratt Homes Complaint

richard2511

Hello all.

New to this forum and have signed up to make as many people aware of Barratt homes as possible.

We reserved a Barratt Homes plot and received the standard 28 days to exchange contracts. Our deadline for exchanging was the 19th April, however Barratt solicitors did not send the correct paper work to our solicitors until the 22nd April. In fact they originally sent our solicitors details for a development site that wasn't even the one we were purchasing a property on.

As a "good will gesture", as they put it, they extended this deadline until the 27th May. Our solicitor discovered that barratt homes do not own the land that they are selling property on. This may be common, I am not an expert in this. Our solicitor raised enquiries to make sure that any charges on the land would be removed and requested documentation to this effect. Our solicitor received a letter on the 24th May stating that they would provide us with copies of the documentation requested as they needed to request this from the land owners. So the 27th May deadline came and we still were not provided with this documentation, even after chasing this.

Barratt Homes then gave us a final deadline of the 3rd June. This deadline was sent to us personally, arriving on the 2nd June by 2nd class post. Our solicitors were not even informed.Our solicitors done everything in their power to get the exchange ready on the 3rd June, however we still had not received the documents required from Barratt Homes solicitors. They sent through documents at 5.01pm which meant we could not exchange even if we wanted to. The documentation they sent through did not even make sense anyway so it could not be used.

Barratt Homes then decided to withdraw our contract and re market the plot. As you can imagine we kicked up hell when we found this out as we had paid over 2 thousand pounds as deposit for extras, agreed to move into temporary accomodation and switch our mortgage, incurring a £3,600 exit fee as our current provider could not provide us with an offer in time for the 28 day exchange deadline.

Monday 6th June came and we escalated our complaint. We were told that if we could get in a position to exchange by the end of the day, they would speak to the MD to arrange to re instate the contract. We managed to do this, but Barratt Homes, at approx 4.30pm, called to say that they would not be reinstating the contract. Instead they put the property back on the website for about an hour at a higher price of 10 thousand pound and sold it whilst we were preparing to exchange.

You can imagine how heart broken we were when this happened. We had been up to the house on a number of occasions, started ordering furnishings etc and our dream home had been taken away from us through no fault of our own.

To make things worse, we know that the plot next to us also missed their 3rd June deadline but were given another week to exchange, even though they were not as close to exchange as we were.

I am writing this to see if anyone has any advice but mostly to raise this issue and get the word out about how appalling we believe Barratt Homes are.

Thank you and sorry for the long post.

Richard

[Deleted User]

I know you have lost a fair amount of money, but it sounds like you had a lucky escape as well.

Wish you well in getting some of this money back.

I'd have thought your solicitor would be the best person to ask as he has all the paperwork. But be a little careful as I had a case (different aspect of law) that the solicitor said I could win .., the barrister told us after the case (which we lost) that we didn't have a chance of winning (although I still believe we could have, if we'd have known the line of questioning as had evidence to cover that, the barrister did a half arsed job unfortunately). It cost £1,500, down the drain.

[Deleted User]

Sounds to me they've used every excuse to get out of selling to you as they got more money elsewhere.

Not sure why people buy new builds as they do nothing but lie and once they have your money you are just another number...

AnotherJoe

IMO you'd have done better posting on their Twitter or Facebook

richard2511

We have tried that.

We now just want to make as many people aware as possible.

norm_

Shocking behaviour by Barratts. Obviously they had no desire to sell to you when they could make an extra 10K.

You should make your complaint known to the CEO and warn them you'll contact the local press with your experience if you don't get a satisfactory result. Last thing a new build site wants is bad PR.

Bonfire_Bride

Awful awful awful.

so sorry to hear this has happened to you. Ruthless.

alice_kate_2

If you don't mind me asking what site was this?

I hope you get your money back! How awful.

robatwork

They are a shocking company. Well they were in 2001 and seems like not much has changed.

If it helps you can look at it another way. You have lost money, time and been very stressed. But you don't now own a Barratts home and never will.

Trust me, that's a good thing.

mleach101

I've recently exchanged with Barratts and have to say my experience of their solicitors mirrors yours in many ways. The firm dealing with my reservation for Barratts failed to supply documents on time, provided incorrect details and also requested undertakings at the last minute. My experience differs with regards to Barratt themselves where the sales office were brilliant and really understanding. I still got some quite shirty letters from head office though which narked me a bit.

It sounds as though someone has decided to really push the prices on your development and seen an opportunity to get more for the plot you reserved. It also sounds like they've done it in the most unhelpful and quite frankly nasty way possible.

I think previous advice about press coverage is worth trying but not as a first step. I would begin by writing to the MD, keep to the facts and layout the timeline. It's hard not to get emotional but if you can keep it factual and methodical it will be better received by them I suspect.

Good luck with it and I hope that you get an outcome that resolves the situation for you.

richard2511

Thanks all for your comments. We have demanded a meeting with the CEO but as far they are ignoring the email we sent.

As regards to the solicitor. My wife works in the solicitors that dealt with the case. We have all the paperwork and files to prove exactly what went wrong.

The development site is Woodlands in Corby. We are going to keep trying to push this as much as we can to the public. Everyone should be aware.