Hi,

We completed on a new build property last Friday, but the property still isn’t complete despite us having the keys. They put the wrong spec kitchen in so the kitchen needs pulling out and redoing, floor leveller hasn’t been put down (our carpets are being fitted by an external fitter) and there are lots of other smaller jobs to be done. Lots of chipped and cracked fittings, pencil marks on walls, holes in the ceiling where they changed their minds about light fittings etc etc.

We were only given our keys so that the developer met their end of year deadline, the house is in no state to move in to. They told us the whole of June that deadlines were very very tight and the builders were working through the night to get finished, but they never gave any indication the house wouldn’t actually be ready. There were other couples there getting their keys at the same time as us, and they were ready to move in that day, only to be told erm no sorry your house isn’t done. We were in a slightly ‘better’ position, as our carpets weren’t going to be fitted for another 18 days. This is because the site would only let our carpet fitter in the DAY BEFORE completion to measure up and we needed two weeks for our carpets to be delivered.

However a week has now gone by and there has been absolutely zero progress on our house, and they now have 10 days to refit the kitchen and sort the flooring out, at a minimum, so we can move in on 16th July - as this is the last day we can stay in our current rented accommodation. I expected to see a decent amount of progress in this week.

We have complained to the site, as well as head office (who rang me to see how we were settling in!) to say it’s not good enough to hand keys over to a completely unfinished house and it’s shocking that no progress has been made in a week. They even had the cheek to give us a welcome hamper when we picked up the keys but admitted we couldn’t have our welcome information pack or our new home demonstration as the house wasn’t ready. Our first mortgage payment comes out in a few days and the house is still a building site!

My partner had taken an hour off work tonight to go down to the site for an update and to complain about the lack of progress this week but the sales girls weren’t there, nor were any builders - turns out it’s their end of year party tonight - nice for them!

Anyway, he has rang the lady from head office again who was very apologetic and said we will be getting some monetary compensation for all of this hassle and did we have a figure in mind. My question is - has anyone got any idea what sort of figure we would be looking at? I should also add that my partner is having a knee operation two days after we will be moving in, which he already had to put back as we were originally told we would be moving in June, when the op was originally scheduled for. Obviously this is a lot more stress to deal with and it means he won’t be able to help me unpack and shift things/look after our toddler over the days after we move in.

Any advice re compensation would be very much appreciated