Reserving a new build - when to negotiate?

biged670

Hello,

My partner and I are hoping to purchase a new build property. We've not started anything formal just yet, the aim is to get Christmas out of the way, and then we plan to meet with an adviser and take it from there.

One of the sites where we have seen a property that we like offer an 'early bird scheme where a £500 fee can be paid to 'reserve the plot'. My question is, at which point do you negotiate the price, extras etc...? Is this done before or after you reserve?



I am trying to gather as much information as I can so we go into the process with a good understanding of everything we can expect to happen.


Cheers

G_M

'adivser'??

Do you mean a salesman whose 'advice' will be to commit to buying asap at the highest price he can get ou to agree to?

Or do you mean financial adviser, who I hope will be completely independant from the Developers...... like the solicitor you eventually instruct?

eddddy

You agree the price (and extras) before reserving.

The reservation is for a specific plot at a specific price.

Trying to change to price later would potentially be the same as cancelling the reservation (and cancellation would probably mean you lose some of your reservation fee).

Just for interest, here's a typical example of a reservation agreement form: http://www.consumercode.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Consumer-Code-Sample-Reservation-Agreement-March-2017.pdf


Having said all this, if the plots have only just been released on an 'early bird scheme', I doubt there is much scope for negotiation yet. If the release is a 'bit of a flop' and they don't get much interest over the next few weeks/months, they might be more open to negotiation.

Pigmyhippo

In our case (Barratts - Buying off plan - Build at stage of foundations laid) we negotiated all extras before reservation. Once we were happy with what we were going to be getting, we spoke to our mortgage broker to confirm that we would be able to get the mortgage we require. We then paid a plot reservation fee of £250. Usually Barratts expect exchange of contracts to happen within 28 days, but before reservation we asked for and were told that we could have up to 10 weeks before we needed to exchange. (We asked for this to give us a bit of breathing room in the mortgage application process.) This was at the beginning of June.

We then appointed solicitors, and started mortgage application through a broker. Once searches, contract etc had been reviewed by solicitor and ourselves, and mortgage was in place, we then exchanged contracts. At exchange of contracts we had to pay a deposit of £2000, with the rest of the deposit payable at completion. This was the end of July.

Just after exchange we had meeting to select extras - tiles, kitchen, carpets etc. This included selecting the extras that had been agreed prior to reservation. We were told that we had to pay the full balance for the extras at the time of selecting them which we did.

After that, it was a waiting game, waiting for the build to progress. We were invited to tour the home at 'first fix' stage, ie after electrical wiring and heating/plumbing had been installed, but prior to the house being plaster boarded. This was to allow us to see and take photos of where cables/pipes were running behind walls to help us when we start drilling into walls to put up shelves! This was in the middle of November. This was a handy stage, as we noticed at that time that a radiator had been fitted to a different wall than was shown on the plans, spoke to Barratts and they moved it to where it was meant to be for us.

House was signed off as structurally complete by NHBC inspector last Thursday, and cover note was sent to solicitor. We transferred remaining deposit to solicitors today, contacted mortgage broker and arranged insurances (home/life/income protection) to commence upon completion date. He had previously quoted for these after securing our mortgage. We have got our new home tour on Thursday this week. We are completing next Wednesday.

That has been our full process, hope it is of some help to you, if you have any more questions, please feel free to ask.

biged670

Pigmyhippo wrote: »

That has been our full process, hope it is of some help to you, if you have any more questions, please feel free to ask.

Really good post, thank you for the info.