To not understand the appeal of new build homes?

[GreenEyeGopher]

I was looking at the proliferation of new build estates yesterday and wondering who buys homes there.

I don't think I've ever lived in a house that's much less than 100 years old.and would find it hard to imagine living in a new build. Or actually, I could imagine living in a new build home but not on a new estate - somehow they don't feel quite like 'real places' to me, everywhere I've lived has had a long time to get established!

So I'm just curious - if you live in a new build, or would like to - what is the appeal?

planning to move to a new build from a 200 year old ‘ character ‘ property.
Light — bigger windows with no overhang that cuts light.
Better lay out.
modern insulation
better thought out storage. Design I’ve settled on has much better storage than the many pokey cupboards here.
Less maintenance.

Old properties that have a ‘history’ and ‘character’ are much overrated ime.

You know exactly how much it’s going to cost and how much cash is needed, as no offers involved.

Well insulated etc.

Don’t have to fix anyone else’s bodge jobs.

Usually 2 years of fixes free, then covered by NBHC for 10 years.

You can choose kitchens and bathrooms to be how you like.

No chain, usually you have a deadline to move by.

I personally would never choose and old house!

In my experience

More for money - ive got a 5 bed 2500sqft new build town house for the same money as a 3 bed 1920s style 1200sqft house.
Cheap to run -solar panels as standard, well insulated
Very little outlay - no boilers to replace, roof to replace etc in the first 10 years at least
Little decorating required in the first few years

And most of all location i am able to directly access the motorway in less than 2 minutes. I have a cinema complex in walking distance.

Yes my garden is small but im disabled anyway so the less the better.

My dad is even a builder himself and suggested a new build.... the shock. Because it made sense for me and my family.

Thats ultimately what it comes down to is personal choice.

Not our first choice but....

We kept getting outbid and there's no a lot on the market in the area we want to live

No chain was an advantage to us as no risk of collapse

All bedrooms are generous sizes with no one in a box room

Other houses in our area we would have had to spend £££ to make them open plan or add a utility etc

It's well insulated so bills will be cheap

The garden is a blank space so we can plan it how we want it and it's large

It's a small development of only 5 houses in a central location, better location than other houses coming on the market in our area

We bought at the stage where we still have major input into fixtures, fittings and layout

We checked the builder & developers other properties and are satisfied the work is good

We're coming from a 100+ year old house and there was always something really odd with how it was built, the electrics, the gas, nothing was straightforward

Old houses are ... old.

Old build. So much more prone to structural issues, damp. energy inefficient. Dodgy roofs.

Renovating listed can be a nightmare.

Soundproofing in old build is generally much worse.

Parking in older builds is much worse. The potential to have problems with deeds, rights of way, unregistered land any sort of legal issue is much higher with an old build.

New builds can be badly built, but also well built as well, a bit like any houses.

The thing I guess I like least about my new-ish build is that everything is "hidden" in the modern style - ie pipes behind walls etc. This means if something goes wrong, it can take a long time to discover (your ceiling gets wrecked before you discover the loose pipe joint) and you have to wreck the plasterboard to get to stuff to fix it.

I think people who say they "can't" live in new builds are a bit precious. Basically hundreds of thousands of people live in them perfectly happily. So the idea that they are "impossible" to live in is clearly idiocy.

New builds are out for me due to my preferences in home character, layout, fittings, privacy, etc. I prefer the character of cosy older homes rather than an open, modern layout.

When I was young and bought my first home I was thrilled to get a new build so I do understand why people choose them.

I don't like them. Only because I've seen many and they are generally very poorly built. 3 of my friends bought bigger detached 4 bedroom new builds, but the snagging list went on forever and then there were drainage and foundation issues.

A lot of it will be personal taste. New builds aren't really for me, and you prefer your terraced house. For me, a terraced house would be hellish, whenever we've bought a house I've filtered terraces out as I won't even consider one. If it was a terrace or a detached new build, I'd be in that new build like a shot!
As others say, you can often buy them without a chain and no bidding war, which takes some of the stress out of the buying and conveyancing process.

Because it was what I wanted.
Five bedrooms, utility room, two living rooms, and a dining room.
Also a garage and room for four cars on my driveway.
These things came above quirkiness in my criteria when looking.

There's a massive difference between a new build from a national house builder on a massive estate and a high quality new build. My new ish build house is on a small development built to a high spec.
I previously owned a Victorian terrace which had been modernised on the cheap, it was damp, plaster was crumbling and it had crappy fittings which would not have been economic to put right. Also no garage or off-street parking.

I'd not really thought about the class angle but it does make sense in that peculiarly British inverted snobbery way. It's bringing to mind that documentary series Grayson Perry did a few years ago about class (or something like that...wasn't it about British taste and class signifiers?)

My biggest bugbears with the ones that have sprung up round here is the lack of space and privacy, the ones I’ve been to when visiting friends are very small and overlooked from almost every window in every room.
The finished quality also leaves a lot to be desired, lack of attention to detail had caused a lot of frustration but only been discovered after living there for a couple of months.

It's both I'd say.

Our first house was a victorian terrace. It was what we could afford at the time where we were. That's much the same thing isn't it?

I'm definitely not middle or upper class, and I can't stand new builds. They're (to me) utterly soulless and make me feel like I'm in a show room on a retail park. I obviously appreciate everyone's taste is different, but I've always found it possible to find affordable places to live that aren't new builds. Not talking ancient stately homes or listed buildings, just pre-existing buildings with their own normal history - terraced houses on streets in towns etc. I can understand that people end up having to live places that wouldn't be their first choice, of course! But purely in matters of taste, as I feel this post asks about, I find them deadening.

We also had loads of problems when moving with sellers changing their minds, long chains etc. if we didn’t find this 3 year old house our next option was to reserve a new build as we needed somewhere to live.

As the proud but occasionally frustrated owner of a 'quirky' 150-year-old property (its biggest fault being that it suffers from an excess of personality sometimes) I can kind of see the appeal of NBs, a bit.

I would imagine that buying one saves you a considerable amount of time watching YouTube to learn random DIY techniques, for example.

I do think this from time to time (normally just after I've shelled out on yet another massive bill of some form or another), but then I think about it and realise that nah, actually I wouldn't give up all this light and space and character and mad bits, even if it did mean having plumb walls and underfloor heating.

The good outweighs the bad (and expensive).

@driedgrassinavase well on the estate we were housed on the majority were the same. When we were looking for houses they were absolutely prolific, three storeys to get the bedrooms in but reduce the footprint and cram more houses into the estate. We think they are so massively impractical for families.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/131318828#/?channel=RES_NEW

It's mostly snobbery I think. Who really has time to think of people's houses in this way? Many people will struggle to buy their own home, anyone who manages it (short of Right to Buy) should be congratulated.

Also being invited to someone's home is privilege and even if it not your ideal taste or place then you should be complimentary and seek to find the positives. That's being a good guest.

Don’t quite get the British obsession with Victorian housing stock. The Victorians were the original developers of identikit housing, you got a house absolutely identical to your neighbour and the surrounding streets.

To claim new builds have no character but Victorian homes do is baffling.

We have neither a new build not period home but I don’t miss our Victorian flat at all. The Victorians were as fond of a building shortcut as Barrett are today.

I find it quite interesting how many people have said that part of the appeal is that no-one else has lived there before (purely because I'm the opposite and part of the appeal of an older property is precisely that other people have lived there before - I like the idea that different families have come and gone over the years).

Our first house was a new build. We had an £8000 deposit and it was cheap to heat so we were able to save money. This was years ago, there’s absolutely no chance we would be able to buy for the first time these days without the new buyer schemes that come with new builds.

I find it weird when people act like newbuilds are all the same and inferior to older properties.

In my area there are lots of tiny terraced older houses some of which are in poor condition whereas the newbuilds are very high spec, have plenty of parking and are designed to be convenient for modern life.

@GreenEyeGopher , I mentioned it, but I meant in terms of everything is new. The carpets are new, the bath has never been usefd etc.

I know someone who when she and her DH moved house to a newly converted apartment, she insisted on having new everything including crockery and bedding. She kept her husband though.

The only house I've ever lived in that was over 100 years old had so much damp it ended up being knocked down and replaced. Old doesn't = better

Plenty of reasons for people to buy new builds - location, availability, design, lack of initial maintenance allowing for more family time, etc.

There is one thing about new builds which is that landscaping is awful. Older properties come with gardens, trees and this softens how they look.

New builds don't have this mostly. Though neither does large parts of suburban London where people rip out the front gardens. Row upon row of 1930s semis with paved front gardens.