Would you pull out of this house purchase?

[ZazuMoon]

We have made an offer on a house built in 2016. Enquired during viewings about broadband and were told by the sellers it was connected. It turns out this is false and there is no connection and not even a phone line. There is no infrastructure at all. When BT installed the fibre to the door on the development the sellers refused it, the only ones on the estate to do so. As there is no infrastructure or ONT box at the property there is no serial number with which BT can help us. BT tells us to contact open reach for an ONT and open reach tells us without an ONT and general infrastructure they can’t do anything. Sellers and estate agent seem to think it is just a case of putting standard broadband in which is worse than what we have now in our much older property. They are unwilling to take any action to solve the issue. I don’t want to risk waiting until exchange of contracts before discovering we can’t get fibre to the premises. DH and I both need this broadband as we work from home one day per week. WWYD?

I am not sure but virgin media might work? Sorry if this doesn't (I am tired and it is late) but there was a stupid problem on our road whereby our side was stuck with rubbish old school broadband and across the road had fibre, because bt only installed halfway across the road. So everyone on our side has virgin media - and it's fast, not expensive, works well,. Have a look into it maybe? Not been an issue at all and we've been here a year.

As they lied to your face about it and are refusing to rectify it I would be very wary there will be other problems too.

I had a friend who moved only to then find the boiler was broken and so knackered she had to buy a brand new one. As the seller hadn't disclosed it she could have pursued them for lying on the inventory, but realistically the legal costs and stress to do so wasn't worth it.

You could find all sorts wrong...

I'd walk away and ensure their solicitor and agent know how they've misled you

There are a couple of other things that have come up since, such as they’ve never had the boiler serviced and in doing so have invalidated the warranty. They’ve also installed a side door to the garage in breach of covenant.
According to BT they have no records of the property.
We have a 6 month old and I am going back to work in 2 months and perhaps this particular house and these sellers are just making things more stressful than they need to be.

There are a couple of other things that have come up since, such as they’ve never had the boiler serviced and in doing so have invalidated the warranty. They’ve also installed a side door to the garage in breach of covenant.

I'd pull out. They are the things you can see and know about. There are bound to be other things that you haven't spotted yet.

I moved into a ground fall detected bungalow thing which was converted from a garage about 5 years ago, which didnt have internet (or a phone line I dont think?). Got Virgin fibre installed in the end but it took about 3 months, but I dont remember having to pay anything particularly extra apart from for the technicition to drill the line through the wall. Took so long as they had to literally dig up the road outside to extend the fibre up the street so it would reach where we where renting.
Not going to lie it was a bit of a nightmare but more so the waiting to get it installed -.-

Breach of covenants will affect you when you want to move again. I know you can get indemnity ins but your situation could involve planning or building reg and fire door regs?

With all you’ve said it would be a no for me

Having rtft I would pull out. Seems like theres simply too many problems and will likely find more will crop up as you go.

Pull out without delay OP .. it gets worse with every update.. 🌺

I don't really understand how the internet connection works, if we recently bought a house which had never had internet (100+ years old house, previous owner had bought it 70-80 years previously) there was no internet connection and we had to get Openreach out to connect it. We aren't rural or anything and all our neighbours had internet.

It took about 6-8 weeks going back and forth with our internet provider to connect it but it eventually got sorted. From what I understand, the internet providers need a connection which only open reach (and perhaps virgin but we don't have virgin in our area) can connect. It was a pain but we got it sorted eventually.

I would try and find out how to get the internet connected before pulling out - particularly if you really want this house

You don't need fibre to both work at home, ordinary broadband will do unless you are both doing online video editing.

Pull out.

It turned out our vendor misled us on one issue - we gave the benefit of the doubt - continued with the purchase and have found multiple other lies since completion. It really isn't worth the risk.

So they refused internet and phone connection, they neglected to get the boiler serviced, and believed they could play fast and loose with planning permission wrt the garage access.

They sound like complete oddballs.

I would run, not walk away from this house.

I understand you want to move. You still need to move somewhere, which isn’t a millstone around your neck otherwise you’ll be wanting to move again. These people sound dodgy, thick at best.

Yes. Fibre bb was one of the things we expected as standard when we bought this house and I wouldn't consider buying a house without it. If they want to sell they will need to sort it out because IMO it would be very unusual for any buyer to be happy with this situation.

Nope I wouldn’t go somewhere without fibre options sorry.
For some it wouldn’t be a deal breaker but it doesn’t sound like an easy fix, if it was then why didn’t they fix it? Unless they are older generation or cavemen? Possibly they were using their own mobile data packages - which is a solution I suppose? I have unlimited data for about 55£ a month.

However you know that feeling when you’re out and about and your phone is being a twat and just buffering and you can’t get online, WhatsApp wont connect and you’re desperate to use google maps but it just says poor connection.....you’re sweating, heart pumping and the rage is boiling just under the surface because it’s 2020 AND YOU JUST NEED THE SODDING INTERNET TO WORK... that feeling? You’d potentially have that all the time with a basic broadband connection. I couldn’t do it. It’d kill me

I’m surprised at all the people saying they wouldn’t buy a house without broadband.
What about all the houses lived in by older people who don’t want it? Would that be such a deal breaker?

See if virgin are then and get that fitted. My house had BT which I didn’t want and the Virgin guy came out the day we moved in to fit the cable.

As for ‘what else have they lied about or not maintained’, other than the boiler what else needs doing in a 4 year old house?

@FlamingoAndJohn they aren’t connected to the phone grid at all. Most older people will have a phone connection.

OP I would def pull out of the sale unless current owner can sort out the Broadband issue. Make this a condition of sale.

When I moved into my new build five years ago I had no broadband (sky) for four months. It was a nightmare. Considering you have no ONT (that's the sockety thing on the wall for your broadband and line to plug into) this could be even more difficult and time consuming to rectify.

Put the ball back in seller's court.

Ps virgin will not do install for you unless they have infrastructure already in your street

PPS I used to work for a large Broadband provider

cardibach how is £65 for three phones and a data SIM expensive? 100gb SIM contracts are normally around £20 each and an unlimited data SIM around £30. Most people pay £35+ for unlimited fibre broadband.

When we bought our house we didn't realise it only had standard broadband until we moved in (not quite the same as no connection I understand). I was worried as we only stream stuff and my husband has Xbox live. We manage to stream on 3 or 4 devices whilst browsing the internet with no issues on a standard Sky internet connection which is max download speeds of 10gb. I probably wouldn't go back to expensive fibre optic now if I had the choice.

Our estate doesn’t have Virgin fibre installed but most of us have the fast unlimited Sky BB. Because our BT Box is old apparently we don’t get the super fast but it’s good and many people work from home here. We just have a landline for BB and I’m really not sure why it would be such an issue to have one installed unless you have miles of block paved driveway that would be impossible to dig up.

The covenant thing is unlikely to ever be an issue and the side door sounds useful.

The boiler is annoying but can be serviced. Warranties aren’t always amazing for tings like this and have limited cover.

You just need a land line sorted nothing else is a huge deal imo.

Pull out today and ensure they know why. This will teach them not to tell lies. They sound thick as pigshit as well as dishonest. If you continue to do business with these people you’ll only have yourselves to blame when you discover more problems.

Why do people keep telling OP that's its fine, she can just go with Virgin or that basic broadband will be fine?

There's no connection to the house. No infrastructure at all. Only Openreach can do that. If she's already having problems dealing with them, it isn't likely to get better.

The warranty on a new boiler being invalidated probably isn't such a big deal now, assuming it's 4 years old.

The covenant could be a big deal or it could be nothing. You won't really know until you want to sell on.

I'd walk away. But I have very little tolerance for people lying to me so I wouldn't want to deal with these sellers at all.

mathanxiety yes they are coming across as oddballs. The woman was certainly very odd; haven’t met the man.

zaffa yes, the speed of the connection was one of the selling points of the estate and it seems unfair and infuriating to not have that because our sellers refused it.

Thank you everyone. We are inclined towards pulling out and hoping we get find something else beforehand so we don’t disrupt the process for our buyers.

Open reach won’t deal with us at all. So instead of trying to sort it the sellers have made the generous offer of allowing someone to come in after exchange. But we have made it clear that we are not prepared to risk waiting until exchange to find out if it can be done. So many hours spent already with BT and open reach customer services and the sellers are just not taking it seriously as it’s not important to them.

@WelcomeToShootingStars I think only one person said non fibre broadband would be fine - I wouldn't live with it! It would be awful.

people (me included) are suggesting virgin or sky MAY be worth a call as they may be able to install cheaply and easily, because we've been in weird situations before where installation hasn't been done 'normally'. The detail for this kind of thing is complicated and esoteric and not common knowledge, so people are trying to help - not sure why this offends you?

Anyway op, there will be other weird things this owner has done, though I'd say if they're only been in since 2016 that's not much chance to have done that many weird things, as opposed to 10-30 years of odd diy bodges etc. Sounds like you're not in love with the place or anything, so you're in a good position.