Buying a brand new house

Baron_Greenback

You're wasting your money - theres a crash coming.

aj9648

Developer is Persimmon Homes. I could not find the other sold houses on houseprices.co.uk for some reason - but will keep looking as it might be hidden somewhere!!!

guppy

Personally I despise new builds. You pay over the odds for the newness, the brochures, the salespeople, for the builder's profit, etc. etc.

Once sold, they fall in value or rise far slower than the average.

I can see the attraction of them looking superficially "shiny" though.

Another downside is, most of them have smaller plots than older houses, less parking/garage space, service charges in some cases, are on funny cramped sites compared to established estates...and no disrespect to yourself, the worst developments attract a whole neighbourhood full of likeminded fools in to buying them!

They are also built with different technology to older houses (e.g. 1930s/50s) which is good in some ways (cheap to heat etc.) but bad in others...roof space full of closely packed trussed rafters so no room for storage (if there isn't a bed there already), plasterboard walls that make putting up sshelves difficult, etc. Plus, the craftsmanship isn't exactly what it used to be...

Anyway, everyone's taste is different. If you do go ahead, just make sure you pay for a snagging survey to be done before you exchange contracts, and make sure you specify that all the defects are corrected before you complete.

It might be a "new" but you can't take it back if its faulty. Every house is a one off, even if its supposedly identical to the showhome...caveat emptor etc. etc.

Finally, have a look at the info below. Channel 4 recently did a documentary on some of the problems with new builds. Even if you disagree with all my nutty opinions...never hurts to consider all the issues before making a big decision.

Best of luck

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8576816145694781888&q=dispatches+duration%3Along&total=126&start=20&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/dispatches/britains+bad+housing/629462

P.S. Be wary of interpreting the prices you see on nethouseprices.com if they relate to new builds. The price shown will give no indication of what non-cash incentives have changed hands. E.g. Stamp Duty paid, legal fees paid, cashback, carpets, curtains, etc. Compare to other houses advertised on Rightmove, and other older houses in the neighbourhood. Decide if the difference is worth it for yourself

Chriswil

It's not true that you always pay over the odds for a new-build. We bought our house (semi) and next door immediately put their unoccupied house on the market for £15k more and sold within a week. 6 months later it went back on the market ans gained another £15k.

Almost 4 years exactly after we bought we sold for a 50% gain in value! Ok, the market may have cooled but I don't expect any great fall. If you plan to buy and hold-on to the property for a while then go for it!

alositha

I don't know whether this is relevant here.
We had so much problems completing the sale for the purchase of our new house. We put our deposit down in April 2006 and was promised that we could move in at the end of July. We sold ours in mid july after a verbal confirmation by the EA that we would move by the end of July. Due to so many problems the completion delayed till late December.
We reserve the house for £130,000 and the developers were selling other same sort of houses for £145,000 when we moved in. We received £1500 as a compensation for the delay.

If you need a checklist for your new house to see everything is ok I have a more than 200 point check list. Please PM me with your email address

dipsy

Everyone likes a new house, first people to live in it, own grime if there is any etc... but my mum and dad bought a house for 75k in I bought one for 32k.. (older house) and yes was some years ago, theirs is now worth 200k and mine 120 k, yes I had to spend some money on mine... probably total of 10k but my house has increased % more thantheir new build, and with new builds unless you buy the show house you have turfing/fencing/light fittings etc and though they might offer to put in light fittings.. they are not going to be what you really want..unless u insist you get what the show house had...? alarm.. a premium again... The really new houses that are detached unless exclusive... tend to not be able to fit a small child down between.. detached yes but only just...

PasturesNew

aj9648 wrote: »

Developer is Persimmon Homes. I could not find the other sold houses on houseprices.co.uk for some reason - but will keep looking as it might be hidden somewhere!!!

The data is delayed by about 2 months. And some never appears.
Currently it's showing sales (completions) in July. First week of November you'll see completions from August.

franklee

Locally to where I am now it's all new builds and there is a three stream market. Flats circa 200K and 4/5 bed detached circa 400K have occasionally gone unsold from new for the last two years. I pass the empty ones most days. But a few three bed semi's have very recently sold at 300K second hand when they were 230K new two years ago and as far as I know they didn't gold plate the taps!

Why people are paying crazy prices I'm not sure, it doesn't make sense to me.

One of the builders was Persimmon and they are the worst quality of the three builders on site, I'm not sure they're still building here anymore.

Measure the widths of the door ways and hall. I've sure the bedroom door ways here are on the narrow side, and the en-suite too small to swing a towel. I would cry if this was my house but the neighbours seem happy enough although I can hear their dog as if there was no wall between us but rarely them talking

www.housepirces.co.uk allows a fairly flexible search. You could try putting the town in and see if the surrounding streets to yours appear. You could I suppose lurk about at the weekend or knock on a few doors to ask neighbours for the inside info.

Some of the builder's incentives are getting creative.

There's one that's called a deferred purchase scheme. Purchasers pay 75% of the purchase price now and the other 25% in seven years time at the market value then. If you sell before seven years the price you sell at is used. The line is "Whether house prices rise or fall, the remaining 25% will reflect the existing house market at the time you decided to sell".

So a builder mentioning falls in their ad!

aj9648

Interesting stuff - I need to do a bit more thinking on this. I am going to make an offer today - probably around the 200K mark and see how we go from there. From what people have said, the max for me £215K and then I go else where

Guy_Montag

Can I add my tuppence ha'penny worth?

Well I will, my folks bought a new build (& indeed I work in a brand new building) & I would say that a few hundred £ spent on a professional snagger would be well worth it. & make sure the snags are fixed before you take possession, if at all possible.

My folks waited months for things to be fixed, though almost all were eventually.