Why are people buying new builds.

Crashy_Time

muhandis wrote: »

Why are people buying new builds?

- Help to buy
- Lack of suitable housing coming on to the market, especially in times of dull housing markets when people just don't move.
- Lack of desire/time/expertise to deal with the huge variations and unknowns in quality of non new-build housing stock.
- Plenty of toilets, showers, bathrooms: especially important for people of overseas origin who are often used to bedrooms being en-suites and toilets on each floor.
- Help to buy

I personally have nothing against new builds, any additional housing stock coming into the market can only be a good thing.

If I was an FTB, I would seriously consider a new-build due to the incentives available. New build prices are unfortunately inflated (by 15-20% imho) due to the incentives available and so are harder to justify as a non-FTB.

I do have a question though. The average sales of new builds (in England) from 1995 to the recession in 2007 was about 114,000 a year. In the time since, the average has been about 79,000 a year. The most recent year (2018), the number was almost 104,000.

I don't know much about the housing market prior to 2010, was there anything similar to Help2Buy which encouraged the the high numbers of new builds being sold from 1995 to the recession?

Yes a massive expanding global credit bubble with property as the main focus of the bankers injection of credit into the system, the idea was that people will borrow more ...and probably pay back over the long term, even in recessions, on the roof above their head. BTL was the cherry on top where already heavily mortgaged people could borrow some more on property! What could possibly go wrong?

muhandis

Primarily the availability of easy credit then? Self-certified income, widespread I/O residential mortgages, etc?

Crashy_Time wrote: »

Yes a massive expanding global credit bubble with property as the main focus of the bankers injection of credit into the system, the idea was that people will borrow more ...and probably pay back over the long term, even in recessions, on the roof above their head. BTL was the cherry on top where already heavily mortgaged people could borrow some more on property! What could possibly go wrong?

leix2012

We are buying another new build because it came in at biggest size house with a garage fair sized garden within our budget, we searched for 8 months. No help to buy this time around but it helped us out loads on the first house.

harz99

RelievedSheff wrote: »

None at all. Our new home is a David Wilson Homes house.

One downside of the plot is that the front of the house is south facing and every room bar the single bedroom has a window on the front of the house, so it suffers badly from excessive solar gain. We really do struggle to keep the house cool enough to be comfortable.

On the flip side it should help keep the bills down in the winter.

I know what you mean, we have a 3 storey town house with 4 leaf bifold doors at the rear ground floor and big windows in the rooms above, also south facing to the rear and with our communal car park behind we get no relief from the sun.

Like you say, good for reducing bills in the winter, but...

getmore4less

When we were looking 25y ago the estate we bought on was still attached double garage on 4 beds
(Second owner 18m from new)

the newer one since went integral single on smaller plots often 3 stories to get 4 beds.

The main competition at that time/price were the large 3bed semis with massive gardens but nearer the main roads.

We have 1000s of new build planned close some allready lived in must find time to research the builds and prices.

Crashy_Time

leix2012 wrote: »

We are buying another new build because it came in at biggest size house with a garage fair sized garden within our budget, we searched for 8 months. No help to buy this time around but it helped us out loads on the first house.

HTB helps the developers out loads as well, and the banks who want to keep their balance sheets looking healthier than they probably are.

Cakeguts

About 20 years ago we though we might want to move and looked at some 4 to 5 bed detached new houses which turned out to be smaller than our 4 bed semi and about twice the price with really small gardens miles from the nearest shops and station. We decided to stay where we are.



The problem is with new builds is that even if they are detached they tend to have gardens that are more overlooked than 1930s houses simply because the gardens are so small and so the neighbours are all much closer. Also detached often means built onto the boundary on one side so you can't walk all the way round the house without going onto your neighbours land.

MERFE

We bought a 3 bed semi new build, it was this or a tiny terrace house that needed alot of work. The houses behind ours are down a hill so we get a view of fields sitting in the back garden and we are next to a lane that leads to a farm with trees so only overlooked by the house we are attached to. The garden is small but adequate and the kitchen diner could have done with being a little bigger but the lounge is larger than the one we were renting, all the bedrooms are bigger and we have a bath here, only had a shower room in the rented house. For us we have no reason to move from here, it's a lovely area and has everything we need so why would we have chosen something smaller that would have cost a fortune with necessary repairs.

Silvertabby

We bought our 4 bed forever home as a new build 25 years ago (local builder, not one of the 'usual suspects') and have never regretted it.

However, we recently had a look at a couple of comparable new builds and were horrified, not only how small they were, but the standard of workmanship - even in the showhouses - seemed very shoddy.

harz99

Silvertabby wrote: »

However, we recently had a look at a couple of comparable new builds and were horrified, not only how small they were, but the standard of workmanship - even in the showhouses - seemed very shoddy.

Hence why the likes of Persimmon are getting so much stick.