Taylor Wimpey

[EVY190]

Hi,

This is my first post, I just signed up to mumsnet today. Myself and my family are looking to move to the local town and we were wondering if anyone has bought a house through Taylor Wimpey? I have seen many happy stories, but the majority are complaints on Twitter.

Has anyone bought a home from TW and if so, what are your experiences please?

Have never bought a new build but there was an article on the BBC website 2 days ago called "the new property trap for homeowners" or similar - have tried linking to the article but can't seem to do it.

TW was mentioned as a company that had sold the freehold of their developments to investment companies who were then hiking the price for homeowners who bought the leasehold title but wanted to buy the freehold.

Only relevant if you're looking at buying leasehold (and its a relatively short lease, say 150years) but worth googling and reading.

I did eighteen months ago and it's all good. Negotiated with them and got a damn good deal compared to market prices in the area.

However, with all the big building companies it really boils down to the site managers and who you're dealing with as it varies

Out of all the nationals TW have one of the best reputations in terms of build quality and aftercare.

Naturally things like twitter are going to be full of complaints though.

Re the leasehold point- that is not only TW, it's common amongst a lot of builders.

If it is a leasehold make sure your solicitor tells you exactly when and by how much the ground rent can be increased, it is usually capped at a % based increase each year, but then I didn't see the BBC doc.

Legally, after owning the house for 3 years you have the right to purchase the freehold, the cost of which is based on the lease term remaining and passing ground rent, so the earlier you do this the cheaper!

Get a survey done by an indecent surveyor.... it isn't a waste of money.

We had to move out of our TW house for 14 months as the floor joists were not put in correctly, year old house had to be gutted and practically rebuilt, a 6 month job that took 14 months as they are not interested in reapiring.

Look in Facebook for taylor wimped unhappy home owners.

here

I agree that lots of house building companies are doing it, and as I said, only relevant if you're buying leasehold. Just pointing out that you need to be aware.

I completed on our Taylor Wimpey home 1 weeks ago, the house itself is beautiful but has got quite a few minor issues which so far have not been resolved. We are due to move in properly Monday and have found we do not have the correct plumbing for the dishwasher and the plug for the fridge doesn't work. The house needs completely painting as they've not put enough coats on. They've got paint on our tiles amongst over annoying minor issues which you can live with but shouldn't have to considering how much we've paid. We have made a snag list which we are discussing on our 7 day visit on Monday.
What is also annoying as people just turn up to do random bits of the snagging, they don't ring and just assume your in. This isn't a problem for me as from Monday when we move their properly I'm on maternity leave but everyone else works so I'm not sure what they expect!
I'm finding it quite stressful as I was expecting a few minor defects in the property but not things like missing plumbing when I'm due to have a baby any time.
If you want any specific information regarding the process etc then please pm me as I've just been through the process, a friend has also just bought on our estate and had a completely different experience to us.

Sorry if long!

Thanks everyone, a lot of helpful points here. I am told it will certainly be freehold and so that's a positive. However we will certainly haggle before we say yes and say that we want to look round before completing as I have heard a lot of these snags happen on pretty much all sites. Thanks guys

Please all of you considering buying a home read about the scandal of ground rents- lots of information on this website:

www.leaseholdknowledge.com/

By TW but am buying our second house through Bellway now. A few snagging issues with the first but they sorted everything out quickly and with no hassle. I think new builds often get a bad press on here but I'm a fan.
The one we're in now was leasehold and we opted not to buy the freehold on purchase (125 year lease with £100 ground rent which got put up to £127)... wish we had so going for it this time. It's only £6,800 on a £310k house so not much difference in the grand scheme of things and I would recommend buying the freehold if you could stretch to it just for peace of mind.

**not TW not 'by TW'

We completed on our new build TW 4 bedder exactly 6 months ago & we feel we made the right decision

We did LOTS of research and chose this particular site because it was advertised as a 'prestige' development (so lots of bits that you'd pay extra for on other sites came as standard) and the site manager had won many awards. The quality of the individual site manager makes a huge difference to how efficient the build is and the overall quality of the house.

The aftercare customer relations manager is also a big part of this. Thankfully ours is lovely & is a stickler for detail; the other TW site near us isn't so lucky however.

That's not to say we haven't had any issues. On moving in, our downstairs loo didn't refill after flushing, the networking points were wired wrong (OH works in IT thankfully) and the garden had a lake in the middle for several months. However they've been pretty good at sorting things out quickly and efficiently for us.

One thing that we were grateful for is that the decorators will come round again AFTER you have moved in, to touch up any scuffs in the walls that you/your removal men may have made during the process. Our removal men managed to split the corner of a wall in the downstairs hallway but the TW decorators came back and plastered and painted it free of charge for us. Looks like new again!

That's good to know about them retouching removal damaged uncomfortable badger we're moving

Clicked send as baby was kicking me!

We're moving next week! Very excited. It's the first house we've bought and we got a good deal (and I know others who have bought on the development who didn't get all the extras we did) as it was coming up for completion so they obviously wanted to shift it. When we weren't in we were looking at the ones that were ready may/June but this one had £5000 knocked off plus loads of extras, upgraded kitchens and they are paying our stamp duty so we just went for it.

It's been a fairly straightforward process, the mortgage advisor and solicitors who were recommended by TW have been very efficient as it's in their interest to keep TW (who were very firm about keeping the close completion date) happy due to the amount of business they get from them.

We got our full mortgage offer yesterday and paid our deposit and completion is net week. Others who have bought on the development were happy with the after care.

So far it's been a positive experience but obviously I'm not in yet!

buggerlumps it's great to hear you've had such a positive experience. However, it's generally not advisable to use the mortgage advisor and especially not the solicitor recommended/paid for by the company you're buying from.

Part of the reason many of the people in the BBC article about leasehold are in the awful position they are is because they used the solicitor paid for my the builder.

I bought a Taylor Wimpey home 10 years ago. Was offered a free solicitor but I refused and used my own. Taylor Wimpey wanted a 10% deposit before exchange which would have meant that had anything gone wrong before exchange we would have lost the lot. The solicitor called me at work and said 'don't sign anything'. She advised me to hold my nerve which I did and the house was mine 3 months later.

The house was great by the way. I definitely recommend haggling.

can you tell me a good solicitor ???WE have looked around reading and found taylor wimpey houses better than Bloor ones .Are builder negotiating now as stamp duty holiday is over