Persimmon Home Change - Not Recommended

Diz1990

My Husband and i have just sold our house through Persimmon Home Change and i thought i would share our experience....

We have decided to buy a new build Persimmon home and because we didn't have our house on the market we decided to use something called Home Change through Persimmon homes to ensure that we could secure our new home. This is basically where Persimmon help you to sell your current property by agreeing on a sale price, putting your house on the market with 2 estate agents and managing the sale once you have accepted an offer. Once you agree to use home change you can reserve your Persimmon home and get 6 weeks to sell your property before you lose your new house reservation. You also agree on 2 sale prices where you have your house on the market for 2 weeks at the higher price and if you don't sell at that price you bring your property down to the lower price in the hope that you will get more interest and sell. Persimmon also cover the costs of your estate agent fees - therefore Persimmon is the estate agents customer and not you as a seller!! This means all the information about offers goes directly to Persimmon who then pass it onto you and you tell Persimmon if you accept the offer or not. We thought wow this sounds great as the amount we put our house on the market for was exactly what we wanted to sell it at. Also we thought it sounded like less stress!

I tried to look into reviews or information in forums about home change however its a new scheme offered by house builders so not many people have shared their experiences. All i can say is we wouldn't being using Home Change again!

Basically we got the impression that people coming to see our house knew exactly what situation we were in with home change and therefore every offer we had was very low - lower than the price we would put it down to after the 2 weeks.Basically we had no idea what the estate agent was saying to the people viewing our property making the buyer have the upper hand as they knew we needed to sell quickly!

Also you have no control over which estate agents put your house on the market, its up to Persimmon who they pick and they may not pick an estate agent who knows your area very well or will put much effort into your sale. For example we had a really good estate agent who got us all of our viewings and then a really bad online estate agent who got us no viewings and didn't know who we were when we rang up. We felt this gave us a disadvantage with selling. We were also not told by Persimmon or the estate agent that we were expected to do the viewings. We were fine to do the viewings but some kind of communication would have been nice due to work commitments!

Due to Persimmon having complete visibility of your house sale it leaves you with little or no negotiation when it comes to buying your new home! They know exactly how much you sell for, how close you are to an offer etc. For example, we had an offer at 8 grand below our higher asking price and 5 grand below our lower asking price. We rejected the offer and shortly after had Persimmon offering to bring our new house price down by 5 grand so we would accept the low offer. We told Persimmon we needed to think about it and left it for a day in the hope that the buyer would put a higher offer in. We then had another offer the next day which was 3 grand below our asking price, persimmon then called us to say they can bring our house down by 3 grand and not by 5 if we accept the new offer and withdrew the 5 grand reduction! Basically Persimmon had the upper hand!

My last issue with Home Change is basically the communication that we did not receive in terms of our sale completion date. Apparently our buyers made the offer with the stipulation that we had to exchange and complete by the 29th of April .We were not told this until today (2 weeks before the date) this would have been fine, however our Persimmon home is not going to be ready until the end of May. We were not told of this completion date at all and we are now being expected to find somewhere to live for a month (maybe more) with 2 weeks notice!!! Persimmon are also refusing to give us a concrete completion date which i understand because its a new build but they are also now pushing us to complete on our house sale. Our solicitor said to me today that Persimmon expect us to break the chain. (We used Persimmons recommended solicitors - BIG MISTAKE)

The only positive of Home Change is that they pay your estate agents fees!

I hope this post gives people an idea about Home Change before they make the decision to use the scheme!

Davesnave

Hello and welcome to MSE, where we always advise people not to use the developer's solicitors or enter into complex selling agreements without an independent legal professional's advice.

Your long story is a good warning to others, but it's really as easy as my first sentence and there's little to add, except perhaps that having read plenty about Persimmon's quality control, I'd not be inclined to look at any of their developments.

[Deleted User]

Thank you for taking the time to post on here. I hope it helps people know what they are getting into with schemes like this.

babyblade41

It's always helpful when people put the experience out there if only to help others.

My personal opinion is that although I'd never buy a new build with it's over inflated price and especially Persimmon after all the horror stories around, and would never ever use the developers agents or solicitors no matter what any of them said

Your agent works for you and solicitor will look after your back and not the developers .

I would not be moving with nowhere to go to unless Persimmon were going to pay for you to do so, those estate agents costs which you don't have now could be completely wiped out when you have to pay for short term rental costs

Completion dates on new builds are never set in stone and notorious for over running by months in some circumstances

The developers solicitor won't fight your corner in this instance whereas your own solicitor would .

Hope the rest of the process gets better for you

mparter

I used Barratt's equivalent scheme a couple of years ago when I moved into one of their new homes. They chose the estate agent and similar to above, gave me a couple of prices that they would market my house at depending on how long it had been on the market. Luckily, my house was in a sought after area so I had an offer after 3 days which was over the asking price.

I used my own solicitor for the conveyancing and to be honest, other than the buyers solicitor being slow, everything went pretty smoothly. I even moved in on the day they gave me.

vb3d

Sorry to bring an old thread up, I am just interested in knowing what agency/agencies Persimmon use to market your property, any ideas?

tim9966

vb3d said:

Sorry to bring an old thread up, I am just interested in knowing what agency/agencies Persimmon use to market your property, any ideas?

Normally just 2 local estate agents. 

vb3d

tim9966 said:

vb3d said:

Sorry to bring an old thread up, I am just interested in knowing what agency/agencies Persimmon use to market your property, any ideas?

Normally just 2 local estate agents. 

Thank you Tim, yeah, but do they have a preference on what estate agents?

moneysavinghero

We then had another offer the next day which was 3 grand below our asking price, persimmon then called us to say they can bring our house down by 3 grand

Seems very generous of Persimmon - you effectively got the price that you wanted. As an added bonus you get to move into a wonderful quality Persimmon home built the Persimmon way.

Gentoo365

Due to Persimmon having complete visibility of your house sale it leaves you with little or no negotiation when it comes to buying your new home! They know exactly how much you sell for, how close you are to an offer etc. For example, we had an offer at 8 grand below our higher asking price and 5 grand below our lower asking price. We rejected the offer and shortly after had Persimmon offering to bring our new house price down by 5 grand so we would accept the low offer. We told Persimmon we needed to think about it and left it for a day in the hope that the buyer would put a higher offer in. We then had another offer the next day which was 3 grand below our asking price, persimmon then called us to say they can bring our house down by 3 grand and not by 5 if we accept the new offer and withdrew the 5 grand reduction! Basically Persimmon had the upper hand!
.....
The only positive of Home Change is that they pay your estate agents fees!

You know what. Without going into the quality of the house you are buying, or the price (no idea) these two features are a reason I would consider using such a scheme.

Effectively they are guaranteeing you get at least the lower of your prices, and given that you have already agreed the price you are buying then you are basically getting what you want.

The fact the buyer had to complete in a certain timeline and the builder expect you to break the chain IS an issue and something I would take up with the solicitor, estate agent and house builder as you certainly should have been informed by one of them and they all should have known. The solicitors should have received a memorandum of sale stating it from the estate agent (but they may not).

If you did not receive details of that stipulation then you didn't really accept that offer (arguably) and have not received a suitable offer. 

I honestly have no idea how they expect you to find a place to live for a month. It is a ridiculous ask during a pandemic. 

Slithery

Gentoo365 said:
I honestly have no idea how they expect you to find a place to live for a month. It is a ridiculous ask during a pandemic. 

There's a massive amount of holiday homes and Air BnB's that are desperate for customers at the moment. It's far easier to find a place for one month currently than it would be if there wasn't a pandemic.