Buying a Bellway home

ChloeHanlon22

Hi All, 

I’m looking for help from those who have bought a new build house from Bellway, or even other companies to offer some advice. Me and my partner are looking to reserve a Bellway property this week and due to the build stage will have to select our extras on reservation. We have an idea of the few bits we want: 

shower over bath
dishwasher 
towel rails etc. 

As this will be our first home we don’t think it will be a forever home (small 3 bed) so don’t want to go crazy on upgrades that will cost too much, which leads to my question. Has anybody got any experience with upgrade options and prices that they are willing to share for new build homes.. especially Bellway? We’re not sure what to expect price as the ‘extras’ booklet doesn’t give much away cost wise or show any choices. 

If anybody has any photos too that would be great! 

Thank you 😌

AlexTheLion

Top and tale of it for me is if you can't push them to include options during reservation phase then avoid. The costs incurred are horrendous really but depends on your priorities (Whether you mind getting your hands dirty). 

When we bought our first property they wanted near £1000 to fit a shower above the bath. That combined with the fact they only tile 3-400mm above the bath, we said no to that one. We eventually got that for free having had all the problems, but in reality I would have opened up the wall over the bath, T'd off the bath feed up the wall and then tiled full height around the room myself for a fraction of the cost for more. 

Towel rails... they should be included? I haven't seen a new build without them. But if you mean chrome towel rails, have a look on screw fix etc they will be hell of a lot cheaper than supplied by a builder, easy to change DIY. The reality is they will supply the smallest one they can get away with and you can get a massive one from a DIY store for a fraction of the cost. 

We did go for carpet upstairs in ours, thought it would make it easier come moving in etc. In hindsight I would just get someone around the week you move in and fit the whole lot in a day. We paid £1300 iirc for upstairs and the stair way, probably 500 quids worth of carpet at most. We also had two spotlights in the living room which saved bit of hassle, but at £120 per light, bit of a P take for a £15 downlight and some cable. The kitchen upgrade I felt was worth it given it was a small addition (£2k ish) in comparison to an entire new kitchen. Additional curb appeal and also just having a nicer kitchen for the two years we lived there felt worth it. 

bucksbloke

Quite often they will throw a lot in. It depends how busy the site is and how many stock units they have. In this market I would problem ask them for flooring throughout, all integrated appliances, towel rails and full shower over bath (with full height tiling) and see what they say. 

Confused789

Negotiate before you reserve. Ours isn't Bellway but we've got 15k to spend. Sounds a lot but doesn't go far! Shower and extra tiling was 1100, splashback in kitchen was 250, quartz worktop was 2k... Check out the standard of tiling etc as our basic ones were really nice so didn't need to upgrade that. 

Annieak47

I’m amazed the ‘extras’ booklet doesn’t have prices - how are you supposed to work out what to spend your budget on? We got £10k extras and free (cheapest) carpets (in a 4-bed house, apparently ‘worth’ £3,400; I’m sure we could get it cheaper if we fitted it ourselves but we don’t want the hassle). The things I would have paid for no matter what: £850ish to include a shower over the bath and half tiling; £175 for dishwasher plumbing; £100 outside tap; £150 outside electric; then we added quite a few extra sockets (65-85), usb points and tv points... They would have charged us £650 to upgrade the kitchen units but I didn’t like the options so I went for a basic unit and intend to change the handles at first and then eventually the doors. 

MidnightWolf

We bought a Bellway new build last year (we actually part exchanged our previous house that we bought as a Bellway new build in 2001). When we were reserving, the sales advisor let me use my phone to take pictures of each page of their Additions folder so that we could go away and work out what we wanted, and I still have the pictures on my phone.

I can't guarantee the prices will be the same as they may vary by area/site, but from what you mentioned above:

Electric shower over bath - includes bath screen and standard full height tiling over bath: £772

White flat towel rail: £161

Chrome flat towel rail: £217

Chrome curved towel rail: £245

As said above, I'd be surprised if a towel rail isn't included as standard.

Dishwasher prices may vary by house type (ours was inluded as standard), but they were listed at £579 for Zanussi and £671 for AEG.

Some other prices for common items:

Outside tap: £133

Single socket (white): £78

Double socket (white): £85

TV point: £109

BT point: £93

Loft light: £78

Downlight: £77

Outside double socket: £150

White paint throughout: £255 for a three bed (this one annoys me a surely it doesn't cost them any more in paint!)

Kitchen, carpet/flooring and tiling upgrades would depend on the house type, as do built in wardrobes and the cost of turfing is plot-dependent.

If there's any other prices you want to know from what I have, just ask.

RelievedSheff

Unless they throw in some extras then you are invariably better off getting them done yourself. The costs they charge are shocking.

David Wilsons wanted £85 per socket to put in some USB sockets in ours. We found the exact same sockets for £10 each! 

This is just one example. Outside double socket for exmple we got done for £50.

I am surprised that they charge for white paint and turf. That is what you would be expecting as standard.

MidnightWolf

Changing sockets for better ones, like including USB, is certainly cheaper to do yourself (I have) and not difficult as long your comfortable doing it. When it comes to adding extra sockets (we paid for a few), outdoor sockets and extra lights, I'd say pay the developers as it's much easier for them to do when building the house and you'd be unlikely to find an electrician that charges less for doing it afterwards.

We bought just over £12,000 of extras, but tried to stick to things that would have been costly and/or disruptive to do once we'd moved in. The one thing we did splash out on that arguably would have been cheaper afterwards was upgrading all the internal door to oak doors, but we decided it would be less hassle when there's so much else to be done in the first couple of years after moving in. We didn't pay for the back garden to be turfed, although I'm slightly regretting it now as it looks like we'll have to delay getting the garden done as we wanted. What's slightly galling is that the houses that are finished but not yet sold all seem to have been turfed. They even have upgraded kitchen/utility worktops as standard and we certainly weren't willing to pay the more than £6,000 they would have charged.

ecraig

MidnightWolf said:

Changing sockets for better ones, like including USB, is certainly cheaper to do yourself (I have) and not difficult as long your comfortable doing it. When it comes to adding extra sockets (we paid for a few), outdoor sockets and extra lights, I'd say pay the developers as it's much easier for them to do when building the house and you'd be unlikely to find an electrician that charges less for doing it afterwards.

We bought just over £12,000 of extras, but tried to stick to things that would have been costly and/or disruptive to do once we'd moved in. The one thing we did splash out on that arguably would have been cheaper afterwards was upgrading all the internal door to oak doors, but we decided it would be less hassle when there's so much else to be done in the first couple of years after moving in. We didn't pay for the back garden to be turfed, although I'm slightly regretting it now as it looks like we'll have to delay getting the garden done as we wanted. What's slightly galling is that the houses that are finished but not yet sold all seem to have been turfed. They even have upgraded kitchen/utility worktops as standard and we certainly weren't willing to pay the more than £6,000 they would have charged.

So you opted for £12or extras... what was the asking price and what did you pay including all extras?

surely you got a discount?

MidnightWolf

House was £415,000 (4 bedroom). Bellway paid the stamp duty, although initially they only wanted to pay half the stamp duty as we were wanting to part exchange our old house. We walked away as a result and the following day the sales manager called me and agreed to the full stamp duty. They also paid us £10,000 more for our house in part exchange than they sold it for.

We had flooring and carpets included, although we did pay a bit extra for thicker pile carpet than the standard. The house is what they term a Gold spec so already had a higher standard of kitchen and included integrated dishwasher and fridge-freezer. We paid for full tiling in both ensuites and half tiling in bathroom and downstairs toliet. We also had a built in wardrobe in bedroom 2 for £1500 (bedroom 1 came with built in wardrobes).

A week or so after we'd paid for it all, they called me to say they'd made a mistake and that the full length wardrobe we'd paid for should actually be two wardrobes (not specified in the Additions book or the showhouse at the time) and could we pay another £1500! I argued that was what we'd ordered and they'd taken the money in good faith and did they want to risk the sale. A couple of days later they relented and included the extra wardrobe for free. They also ended up giving us nearly £500 back as we'd paid for an upgrade to the cooker hood when in fact that wasn't even available on our house type (comes with a decent quality one as standard) and it was listed wrong in the Additions folder.