Buying the freehold of a new build Persimmon house?

Suganeepan

Anyone bought a home in Downsview Swanley from Persimmon? Any reviews, please?

Suganeepan

Can you tell me where did you buy? I'm thinking of buying one freehold property in Swanley. Reviews about Persimmon is terrifing me

dieseltaylor

I think some people would benefit from knowing that the builders ARE and have been taking advantage of housebuyers.


If you go back to 2008 in Scotland there was already a practice of the builders tying in buyers to a particular company , often Greenbelt, to look after the amenity land which was in Greenbelts name not he residents of the estate.


Just collecting money is easier than doing the work and so this caused ructions and eventually a change in the law in Scotland which has a different legal system to England and Wales.


One of the most disgusting parts was in one case the builder retained the right to buy back a building plot for £1 from Greenbelt despite the residents being billed for its maintenance.


I have actually spent considerable time looking at the problem and the companies linked by Directors to the builders who buy these leases. I have also in my time granted mortgages , read hundreds of leaseholds, and run flat management companies for residents.


Bottom line it is in everyones interest whether you have a freehold or a buying one or a leasehold to join in pressing for the abolition of leaseholds which even if the GR is fair may well contain onersous clauses for permissions. For flats commonhold is the way to go.


I see someone referred to a minority of leases. It may be a minority but the practice is of recent origin and affects upto 100,000 people so hardly a trivial problem.



We also have to be concerned that a lot of conveyances/solicitors have betrayed their clients in return for continued work by being on the builders panel. I ask has anyone seen anything about solicitors being disbarred? has the SRA publicly done anything?



There is a pile of worms here and just looking at it as an academic exercise of should one buy a leasehold or not is rather too easy.


I should mention that the Guardian has been one of the best of the media exposing this rooking of consumers and the poor quality of finishing. I have mentioned to Which? the self-proclaimed consumer champion that they have failed miserably in this area of leases, and also pointed them to Holland where buyers are allowed a 5% retention until all snagging is completed.


If you are a Which? subscriber I suggest that you goad them into action. With 600,000 members you might think it would be they rather than the Guardian or the Nationwide Building Society to blow the whistle on this disgusting taking buyers for a ride aided and abetted by tame solicitors who have breached SRA rules of conduct.

Toddszee

Just started the process of buying the lease off Persimmons Homes. They did not tell me about the legal costs when buying the home, which according to the solicitor are expensive. Without the Freehold the house will not sell, mine has been on the market for a full year. It looks like I am going to lose money on the house sale and take a big hit buying the lease. You have all been warned. I have had my fingers burnt don’t buy a home for heavens sake.

Toddszee

Here are the costs of buying a freehold from Persimmons. The whole process has taken 5 months to do. Persimmons want £3750, you also pay their legal costs, add another £600 plus. The rest of the costs are your solicitor’s fees which take the grand total to about £6000. This was to convert at 999 year lease to a freehold. So yes they do let you buy the freehold but it costs much more than the sales person quotes. So it’s done, will the house fall down before it sells? Thats another Persimmons question! To be honest I will not live long enough to get my money back but I hated paying £150 to them every Christmas. Good luck all!

Alisdair_C

Toddszee said:

Here are the costs of buying a freehold from Persimmons. The whole process has taken 5 months to do. Persimmons want £3750, you also pay their legal costs, add another £600 plus. The rest of the costs are your solicitor’s fees which take the grand total to about £6000. This was to convert at 999 year lease to a freehold. So yes they do let you buy the freehold but it costs much more than the sales person quotes. So it’s done, will the house fall down before it sells? Thats another Persimmons question! To be honest I will not live long enough to get my money back but I hated paying £150 to them every Christmas. Good luck all!

Hi Toddszee,
I am now in the same process as yourself. Exactly the same price and have just sent off the documents they requested (well my slow useless solicitor's have).
Our buyer's solicitor is refusing to proceed until they see the draft deed of transfer. Do you mind sharing how long the process took to get to that step? How many steps are there? And were there any complications or extra bits you needed to do to get them to get on with it?
I'm worried our buyers will drop out if if takes 5 months!

penners324

I would say don't buy a Persimmon house. They have the worst record of house build quality of any of the mass builders. Run Away from it very fast indeed.

Alisdair_C

So today we finally completed the purchase of our freehold. We started the process in October 2020, and Persimmon were quick to issue the letter with the offer price. It was quite expensive, and there is the option to challenge it with a valuation, but these valuations are not cheap. By speaking to various conveyancers who specialises in leaseholds, I discovered that Persimmon were overpricing their offer, but by about the same amount as they average cost of the survey needed to prove it and challenge for a cheaper offer. So they've cleverly caught the buyer out by giving a price equal to the actual value plus the cost of the survey type they accept to challenge it. If you take the hit and do the survey, there is no guarantee Persimmon will adjust their price, so it's not worth the gamble. Sneaky b******ds!
We wanted to sell our house as freehold as we were told leasehold houses did not sell, at least not at the same value as a freehold house. I hoped we could do both transactions simultaneously to save on solicitors fees. That was a big mistake. The hassle of purchasing the freehold delayed our house sale by months and nearly lost us the buyer's and sellers who were losing patience!
Two key points.
1) Persimmon refused to sell the freehold title with the buyer's as the named owners, requiring two transactions rather than one for us (freehold purchase from Persimmon, then transfer from us to new buyers). The reason they gave was the price offered was a special Persimmon only customer price. This is a joke given the above.
2) The estate management company had to sign the transfer deed. I do not know if this is usual, it certainly wasn't usual for RMG (management company). They messed us around for over a month refusing to sign and acting as if they had a say (Persimmon had the legal right to offer the freehold, which they had, so RMGs stance was wrong).

All in all, with an delay from a rubbish solicitors firm (do not use Muve!), the process took us 8 months. This would have been 5 had our solicitors started sooner. They were not prepared or efficient enough to deal with it and in the end I did 90 percent of the work to push this through. 

If you are going to buy your freehold, start early! Do not wait till you sell. One neighbour on the same estate suffered waiting 13 months for their freehold purchase. This was during lockdown, but still, all the people I dealt with said they'd never seen such an awkward and difficult transaction. I'm so relieved it is over.
Bizarrely, the Persimmon staff were lovely and helpful, but the directors and higher management behind Persimmon are the ones who play the money game. Make sure you go into a freehold purchase with a good solicitor and that you are well informed. This is not a simple 'pay the fee and we sign the deed' transaction. It's a massively over-bureaucratic money making scheme. Do it as early as you can afford to and be prepared to work hard to push to get it done.
Good luck.