ANy experience of new Build houses

[Eve]

I live in a small market town and even though we really like our current house, its too small.

Only issue is that the only think available of the size we want is a new Build Taylor Wimpey home.

I'm slightly nervous of them.. having only lived in older , more established houses before.

Any experience.. reputation etc

I bought mine new a year ago, through redrow

What would you like to know, ill be glad to help

I must say I woukd recommended them as they have been great, got lots of extras by haggling and a chunk of money off the asking price too.

I deal with newbuilds on a professional basis...

I'd say watch out for small rooms, they often put especially made small furniture in show houses to make you think its bigger than it is, ask for the plans measure your furniture and draw it on to make sure things will fit.

The other thing which puts me off buying one is the small gardens, building land is at such a premium now that you won't get a big garden unless you self build.

On the other hand, they are very well insulated and efficient to heat so your bills will be lower. Energy is not going to get cheaper so this will be a bigger factor going forward. I would always go for one with a south facing roof pitch with an eye to future solar power, but that's perhaps because I'm a bit of a building nerd.

Lack of storage ia a concern, not many have an uderstairs cupboard fir some odd reason.

What set of extras did you get? And how much discount?

Look out for storage and parking. Our parking situation is awful. Houses with car porches which are too small to open car doors and one space only per house. Which is a pain since most people here have 2 cars.

On my second new build, the quality does vary from builder to builder in terms of the finish and also from site to site depending on the site manager. If possible ask to see in a completed house that isn't the show home to check the quality of finish. Always haggle on price and extras. Make sure you do your snagging check thoroughly. My present house is a Bryant/Taylor Woodrow and is about medium in terms of finish I would say. Persimmon tends to be less well finished but their layouts are much better. Wimpey seem to be about average but are notorious for not having decent wardrobes. The smallest bedroom is always really small and rarely has room for a wardrobe - usually just space for a single bed and chest of drawers. Wimpey usually dont have utility rooms either so it can be difficult to get a dishwasher that space next to the sink usually being used by the clothes washer.

They are however much lower maintenance and very warm and you just need to get clever with storage and decor/furniture.

We are in a new build, but it's HA and wasn't built by a big commercial builder. Overall very happy - some 'messy finishing' which I wouldn't normally tolerate and the paint on the walls is the cheapest of the cheap (rubs off with a damp cloth!!) but like others have said it's v warm - very efficient new boiler.

Also watch for things like - no outside tap and we're mid terrace and there's no plumbing at the back of our house so when we need to water the garden (lol not last year!) we have to trudge through the house with a watering can back and forth.

I must say my finish is excellent, no problem in that department.

The snagging was silly things like scratches on kitchen doors which they replaced, they even touched up any knocks after we moved in. We have had a bit of srinkage after a year but we sorted that ourselves. We have a utility cupboard thing and intergrated dishwasher, a utilitywoukd be nice but Its not essential. My garden is small and its really overlooked, but on the whole its nice.

Not much to moan

6 month old TW new build here. Decent room sizes & sensible layout, including a utility room and 4 bedrooms all big enough to fit at least a bed, wardrobe and chest of drawers. This will depend on the house style though - some of the others on this estate were not so good, which is how we came to pick this one.

We also have a drive with space for 2 cars, and a garage, but we don't have an understairs cupboard, which would have been handy, although there is a huge storage cupboard above the stairs, plus an airing cupboard. We also have a decent size hall where we've fitted a shallow wardrobe for storage. Kitchen had the option for built-in f/f or leave a space for freestanding, which we went for. D/w is built in, but w/m is free standing in utility.

We had some minor snagging issues, couple of electrical things like switches being the wrong way round, and a few problems with the windows, but our site manager was excellent and very approachable. There's an ongoing issue with stupidity on the part of British Gas and bills relating to before the house was complete, but this is not TW's fault, and I just take the debt collection letters to the sales office and they pass it on to the legal people.

One thing to note, if it is a new development - there probably won't be any bus routes running yet so you won't get gritted (although ask the sales office if they know where the bus routes are planned for, if you do/don't want to live right on one), which can be a pain when the weather is like it is today!

we are 10 years in in this house now and we still don't get griitted - we are in a cul-de-sac - a couple of years ago we couldn't get any cars in or out for nearly 3 weeks! The snow had frozen into a 4 inch deep rutted slippy nightmare - they had run out of salt and ended up making public dumps of fine ground chippings which we went and collected by sledge - that seemed to make it worse tho.

I was going to say lazy workmen. The insulation & sound proofing is fantastic but the workmanship is shoddy. I would much rather get an old house & renovate. Everything seems to go wrong after the two year internal guarantee & if they are so sure if quality why do they only offer a 10 year external?

If you are intending to stay in your new home for some years remember to set aside something each month for repairs/replacements because a few years down the line you will find that you need quite a lot doing all at once.

We rented a Barrats Box as DH called it, my god were we glad we were renting it.
Double glazing was blown within two years, major problems with damp and condensation, no parking apart from driveways so regular rows between neighbors whenever people had visitors. The 5th bedroom over the garage was bloody freezing despite having two radiators and a heater, just seemed to disappear. Oh and the bloke next door got done for attempted murder but I suppose that could happen anywhere. We left skid marks at the end of the 6 months.

New builds don't hold their value like a period property - unless they are very high end (which Taylor Wimpey are not).

Totally depends on the house builder and the area it's in. The 'posher' for want of a better term the development the bigger and more thrown in extras (and price!). Ours (that we are now renting out - sob!) was built by a small company that specialised in luxury developments (ours was the most down market they did ) , but you got LOADS of free tile / carpet / cupboard/ fireplace choices, LOVED picking them!!

As others have said watch out for show homes using smaller furniture, you can spot this easily after a few views though. Also check they are brick built all the way up so you don't have paper thin walls. There does seem to be a theme with not enough parking, but then again the big house developments all seem to have plenty so you might be fine? I generally prefer the smaller < 20 house developments but thats just a personal thing. Most of the ones I've looked at lately appear to have loads of built in storage, so it seems they are addressing this generally.

There are defo deals to be done with them at the mo- good luck!

I'm off to look at new builds again now!

DH is a painter on new builds and he says try and find out when they were built - you ideally want one which was built and roofed in the summer as some builders are know to build the structure then leave them sitting over the winter then putting the roofs on and finishing them - you don't want to buy a house which has been open to the elements all winter.

Also find out if it is newly finished find out if they leave the heating system on during the winter - he has pages of snagging to do on empty houses as they leave the heating on full blast over the winter, doors & window closed and everything starts to open up and the shrinkage is unbelievable.

Should also have said, ours was excellent quality, but I do think it helped that they were a local firm with a reputation to keep up. I have looked at other companies and they have seemed a bit shoddy. Try and speak to someone who's bought one maybe?

Do you know what the most useful aspect of this house has been, compared to the 1920s terrace and 1970s semi we've previously lived in? Wide doors.

All the door ways in new builds are now a decent width, to allow wheelchair accessibility, which is not an issue for us at the moment, but it does mean that all your furniture flies in and out without a moment's thought!

I think the accessibility reason is also behind why a lot of new builds going up now are far better proportioned that those of the late 80s/early 90s.

We have a new build! We bought the show house and got lots of freebies! Is brilliant. Thoroughly recommend buying the show house.

Mines the same ISSP.

You can hear what s going on in the ensuite in the living room

Did you get all the furniture too orange?

We got one bit but no big bits but they would have sold then to us.

We got white goods, already decorated so some wall paper and paint, floor coverings, window coverings, lots of frames and some mirrors we also got an extra shower that they only put in to entice the punters! Oh and a clock.