Buying a brand new house

wymondham

Dithering_Dad wrote: »

We bought our house when it was three years old. All of the new-build niggly issues had been ironed out by the previous owners, plus they had dug out a lot of the half-bricks, roof tiles, discarded cement & tarmac, kerb stones and other crap the builders hide under 10cm of top soil and turf in the "garden".

Under our stairs we found bricks/cement/coke cans and porno mags/newspapers ... dedicated team!

excellent point about the garden - we also spent ages getting rid of their rubbish!!

Marsh_Samphire

I have a 2 year old Persimmon house and we have only just got the last snags sorted out. We had plumbers in 3 times in the first week and then the boiler starting tripping out the electrics, it took about 8 weeks with no heating and countless visits from various boiler people and electricians to find out that the kitchen fitters had screwed though the electric supply to the boiler when they put the cupboard round it.

I would not buy another new house from Persimmon.

mouse10

We have just reserved a new Bovis house. It was up for £220,000, we got it for £200,000. It took several attempts with them coming back at lower and lower prices. We probably could have pushed them a bit harder but had found the plot we wanted so done the deal. We were also interested in a Laing house at £249000. They came down to £206000 almost immediatley. I would go in with an offer of £180000 to £190,000, you never know how desperate they are for a sale. This is my third new house, yes there can be a long snagging list, but in my experience they have always put things right.

guppy

Dithering_Dad wrote: »

We bought our house when it was three years old. All of the new-build niggly issues had been ironed out by the previous owners, plus they had dug out a lot of the half-bricks, roof tiles, discarded cement & tarmac, kerb stones and other crap the builders hide under 10cm of top soil and turf in the "garden".

I don't know of anyone who has ever moved into a new build and not had a series of plumbing, roof, window, kitchen fittings, central heating, garden or electrical problems. Perhaps now the housing boom is ending, the builders will have to concentrate on building a quality product in order to sell it, instead of throwing up a load of rubbish ASAP and then running off to the next building site. I somehow doubt it though.

Rant over

I'm sure the shiny brochure was nice though! Agree with everything you say anyway. Buiders don't create homes, they just flog products. And arguably increasingly poor quality ones these days what with labour shortages in the trades, lack of land for building, and the fact they know people will buy any old junk put on the market...