AIBU - new build houses are AWFUL

[hooplahooper]

I am currently living in a BRAND NEW Bellway home - renting while I renovate my childhood home. I was excited to live in something new enough to be zero maintenance while dealing with my own big Reno project...

But holy HELL it's been an awful eye opener for me. I've lived in 11 houses across three countries as an adult - 5 of which I have owned + sold - and I have never come across such bad build quality before. Some of the (many) entry level issues (which the landlord has repeatedly
flagged with the builder to no avail) include:

• The walls aren't plastered, just painted plaster board - so zero internal sound insulation,
• the tiling is wonky in all rooms
• the windows don't seal,
• half the doors don't catch on the hinges without considered effort.
• the laminate kitchen counters aren't sealed at any joints
• the front door hinges are loose
• the electric car charge point doesn't turn on
• The stair railings aren't secure
• there is black mould everywhere from a leak (now stopped, but mould not attended to)

I'fe lived in new builds before overseas - I know there are always snags, but everything about this house feels like corners are cut + quality is compromised.

I'd let it go - I don't really care for me, I'm moving into my own home in 8 weeks - but I'm raging on behalf of my lovely + hard working neighbours here - who have got enormous mortgages on these poor quality structures.

I posted about it on my personal stories and have heard all sorts of even worse horror stories about new builds by Baratt Home, Persimmon + Taylor Wimpey as well. It seems universal that these huge developers are building low quality, parasitic dormitory towns on (often) greenbelt lane - and making astronomical profits from them (650m for Bellway last year..!)

With such gigantic profits - they could be building better quality homes if they wanted to. But they don't. And the government is clearly so caught up in meeting housing targets they are turning a blind eye.

I am RAGING. I am grateful I don't have to live here forever - and furious on behalf of the millions of people that deserve so much more.

YABU - let it go, they're not so bad you terrible snob. People are happy with their homes + can make their own judgements

YANBU - hard working people deserve more + there has to be a way of holding these big companies accountable for prioritising profit over quality homes

The 10 year NHBC warranty is for structural issues only.

Me too, in Tokyo! Huge growth of condominiums in the last 20 years, resulting in increased floor space. As long as you have walkable cities with lots of amenities a short stroll away and good public transit and parks, it can be a great way for many families to live, and a lot of people really enjoy living like this.

But it requires the general public and government to be comfortable with building taller buildings and with developing proper, fast, clean reliable public transit that works.

The UK has never committed properly to this kind of development, other than in a small number of (overpriced) urban centers, in part because of the idea that EVERYBODY must have a separate house and a garden attached to it, and a car.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/feb/11/welcome-rabbit-hutch-britain-land-ever-shrinking-home#:~:text=In%202014%2C%20researchers%20from%20Cambridge,allegedly%20the%20world%27s%20happiest%20country). Japan also does not do so well for floor space per person, but at least it’s grown over the past 20 years and we have other things to make up for it, like good public transit and very safe, walkable public spaces. The UK is going in the opposite direction; per person floor space is shrinking, and it’s already the smallest in Europe.

@user1477391263 I follow a Brit in Japan on youtube and one of his complaints about flats there is that as well as the very small size there is extremely poor sound insulation, have you found that to be the case also or does it depend?

I often don't find the soundproofing in UK flats particularly good but he made it sound worse than that.

If people are expected to live in flats especially higher up they need to not be over insulated (i live in a one bedroom sweatbox social housing flat) and air conditioning needs to be considered. No air conditioning means lots of cold baths or showers I dont have a shower I have a bath. Im not going to bed sweating and stinking just so the HA can get funding and contractors can make £££££ by turning the place into a sweatbox. The reason people dont want to live in flats in the UK is because they are shitholes. Flats in other countries have built in laundry rooms for washing and drying clothes yet UK flats have nowhere to dry clothes except inside the flats. And if you have a balcony the gaslighting fuckers who work in housing dont want you drying clothes on there either. There seems to be the assumption that if you dont have kids you dont need to wear and wash clothes.

In the UK we dont have homes unsuited to lifestyle. We have homes unsuited to LIFE. It is disingenuous to say that Brits dont want to live in flats when flats in other countries are built to suit life and the UK ones arent. And if British people dare to ask for air conditioning they get told it will make climate change worse.
Any other country asks for it Oh yes of course you can.

We had a problem with our box gutter 9 years in and NHBC fixed it for nothing. It was a £3.5k job due to scaffolding (3 stories).

Caused by planners insisting we had the same style frontage as the Georgian builds across the road, with essentially the front wall continuing upwards to hide the roof. Who had scaffolding up when we moved in!

@JenniferBooth completely agree.

Appartment living only works if the flats are properly constructed and thoughtfully designed. Friends of mine live in Barrett Housing new build flats and report no ventilation and boiling hot summer temperatures. 🙄

https://www.homeviews.com/development/battersea-power-station-sw8/

this is interesting- reviews from the owners of the new luxury flats at the Battersea Power Station

The new build estates near us that have been thrown up in weeks are tiny and intensely ugly.
People seem to clamour for them - they’re all £500K or so, so they could have easily bought something less shit.

I agree, OP. It's appalling to think of people crippling themselves financially for such a poor investment.

How does this work, though? Surely developers need us more than we need them? How do they get to screw us over like this?

In the town where I live there are 3 very nice brown-field sites - really good ones in leafy settings - which developers have bought up and surrounded in ugly, scruffy hoardings for nearly a decade now. But nothing ever happens - and I don't get why the council can't just give them a deadline - either get building (to a good standard!!) or give up the land.

Why do the developers seem to always have the upper hand?

It s not so much the flat but how it is built and placed. Our thirties solid concrete flats are fine - we even survived the 40 degree temperatures in London last year pretty much unscathed. The reason? We have a large garden with lots of shady greenery and trees and windows that create a through breeze.

Also any freeholder that says you can't dry washing on your balcony is a dickhead. Do they want you to get condensation and mould?

There is high demand at the start of a development then when the demand reduces they start offering incentives. I saw one developer recently offering the first years mortgage paid.

Totally depends - there are some shockingly crappy buildings here as well. I live in a modern condominium with things like underfloor heating and double glazing. Totally agree with PP, flats need to be nice and properly constructed or people will not live in them! I would never live in an old Japanese house or flat with good reason.

The laundry thing is maddening. There need to be laws against rules stopping people from drying things on balconies or outside in general, for cost and environmental reasons! I dry everything on my balcony as driers are not common in Japan (and not so necessary for us as we have a lot fewer rainy days than the UK). Japanese bathrooms in modern condos are usually designed so that you can dry clothes in there overnight if you have a cold or rainy spell - they seal up tightly and have ventilation-and-heat systems that can be switched on for drying clothes. Very handy and avoids having to waste space on a drier.

@CoffeeCantata you ask “ Why do the developers seem to always have the upper hand?”

Because developers pay Conservative MPs handsomely ( in various perfectly legal ways such as party funding and hosting big events) to write the rules in their favour.

I’ve worked in and around town planning for over 20 years. All that stuff Osborne spouted about a “bonfire of red tape”? That got rid of decent home insulation standards, and requirements to fit solar panels on new builds, and lots of other things.

The last Labour government had made some pretty good long-term gradual rule changes which would have got us net zero in new builds by 2016 - we were well on the way - and it was all chucked in the bin by the Conservatives in 2010.

So now we have hundreds of thousands of badly built, poorly insulated, car dependent new houses up and down the country, none of which have solar panels, heat pumps, local heating networks, cycle routes, etc etc. But some Tory MPs have had some nice dinners, so it’s all fine…

YANBU for some, but of course quality will differ between developments.

Our local housing tends to either be brand new Lego housing; solid ex-council with large gardens or ornate Edwardian. We live in the latter and deal with constant repair issues, but I wouldn't swap it for one of the new builds (which I'm not sure we could even afford now 😆). The council houses are by far the best buy, but a lot of people look down on them compared to a clean new box (historic RTB is a whole other issue of course).

Only read about half the thread, so sorry if I'm repeating stuff.

As well as all the more serious structural issues, these are the problems I see with many 'luxury' new-builds:

They sacrifice space to be able to 'boast' lots of ensuite bathrooms. Most family homes only need 2 bathrooms, but it's seen as a status symbol to have ensuites coming out of your ears - so bedrooms are tiny. All that bathroom cleaning - no thanks.

Plus, you get huge new-builds where we are (probably have 6 bedrooms, ensuites, home gym and cinema etc etc ) but are about 6 ft from the next house if you're lucky. If I had that sort of money one of my main priorities would be to be very far from any neighbours! Weird. And don't people like greenery, trees and flowers? No? Just some astro-turf and an outdoor kitchen? Depressing and not great for bio-diversity.

From the ULEZ thread. Another point re. flats

Ilmecourtsurleharicot · Today 09:23
I need to add if TFL or Team Sadiq are reading this, that cycling isn’t always an option for urban residents who want to use a bike. Loads of converted houses to flats and many purpose built flats don’t have anywhere secure to store bicycles and you have to pay a lot and go on a waiting list for the council rented secure bike sheds which often aren’t located where the flats are. So that needs to be part of the joined up thinking too

It's basic economics of supply and demand. We have a shortage a millions of homes, so developers know that people are desperate to buy "anything".

Same with the rental market - dozens of people wanting it when a flat comes onto the market, so offering more than asking price, 6/12 months rent in advance etc., just to get "anything". We've just been through it with my son. Took months, but finally got a flat, paid 20% over asking and a year in advance, and it's far from perfect, but what choice does he have? He needed to live somewhere commutable near his job, so other than that it could have been sleeping in his car!

@CoffeeCantata

Yes, love living in a house like that, I absolutely wanted to be near “people” and “neighbours”. Living in the arse end of nowhere in a 6 bed with no people around me didn’t appeal. Must be my council estate roots. Love all the people near me 😂. Also, no cleaning when you can hire one.

Because it’s the truth. They are decorated horrendously and all look the same. A beige box with the same boring fixtures and sometimes a zany strip of wallpaper. Void of soul and character. Again 100% for people with no imagination and require a ready made box.

They've built a load here locally, some where lovely fields and woods had been. The poor rabbits (one field had been known as rabbit field locally).

In an area without the infrastructure and resources to support them too. We couldn't get a GP appointment before they were built...

They're also packed into these plots like sardines with very little privacy or parking space, and postage stamp gardens. They're a real blot on the landscape, these estates, and they're selling for high prices.

The houses themselves are awful and lacking in character with little in the way of soundproofing. Along with them being packed into plots like sardines with the lack of space and privacy there have been many neighbour disputes already in the local area groups.

I agree that they're just soulless boxes with similar dreary bland interiors.@allthegoodgirlsgotohell

@allthegoodgirlsgotohell

Fully love my lack of imagination 🙌.

Must rub off at work too because I fucking hate displays and I refuse to do them. Thank god for my TA for having an imagination 😜 🤣.

I don't think that's fair at all. There is a real housing shortage in the UK, and people have to buy these things otherwise they won't get on the property ladder at all.