Buying a new build

[Mirrorxx]

So this may be a stupid question but I'm unsure of how this works. If we wanted to buy a new build that won't be ready for a while when do we need to sell our current house? And can we use the equity in our current house towards the deposit in the new build?
Any help would be appreciated

You will have to be SSTC to reserve a New Build and in most cases the developer will want a 6-8 week exchange deadline.

Usually have to pay a 10% deposit at exchange and yes this can be funded from your sale. Your solicitors should be able to negotiate a lower deposit if your sale isn't releasing that much at exchange.

We are buying a new build and are due to exchange next week but completion won't be until May / June next year so will be going into rented when we complete on our sale in January.

We have pre-reserved a new build and will complete the reservation in Jan. From that point we have to be at least SSTC and be able to pay 10% deposit.

Our house won't even be started until the summer, completion should be next Dec!!

I think they expect you to sell and rent, especially if the properties are popular.

Sorry, should have said be able to exchange and pay the 10% deposit within 28 days!!

I think it you should be able to negotiate with the developer unless the the houses are massive.y popular. It does sound ridiculous that someone would expect you to rent if the house isn't even built.

That has confirmed what I feared, thanks. My DH is not keen on renting due to bad experiences with letting agents before we bought our first house

Mirrorxx

I think if you want to avoid renting you’d be better looking for plots almost complete and then I’m sure the developers would work with you as long as you were SSTC

Unfortunately for us we picked a development where there were at least 5 names against each plot when we put our name down in Feb this year so we knew we would have to be in a position to proceed
And that was for houses not due to start completing until end of Jan 2018 with ours being almost mid way through next year !

Can you not sell your existing house to the builders of the new house? Part-ex scheme?

I agree JoJo. I don't feel at all comfortable paying £50k for a plot of land that won't even have foundations until the summer! But we were lucky to get the plot that we wanted on an early bird reservation and there's now a queue behind us.

I also agree with mjs that I completely depends on how popular the development is and which house you're looking at. For example on ours, there would be much more room for negotiation on the 3 beds, absolutely none on the 5 beds.

You exchange when the builders tell you it’s ‘nearly ready’ nearly ready meaning it’s got no fucking roof yet then fob your buyers off for weeks and weeks till it’s actually ready then dictate the completion date lots of new build companies offer to do the selling for you, please don’t do this it’s a pita and just adds another middle man me bitter no not at all

Lots of new build companies will part exchange, which does make things slightly easier as you don't have to go through the hassle of selling yourself, however they will often offer a lot less than your house is worth.

then fob your buyers off for weeks and weeks till it’s actually ready then dictate the completion date
And then even when you do move in, several things need "finishing off" and there are quite a few things that are never right either.

It's a pain the arse timing wise we were able to do it as our buyers were in rented and would work to the builders ever changing schedule but this was very unusual apparently.
TBH I wouldn't recommend it, tiny gardens, building working you're at the start of build noisy and creates a lot of mess, there's a lot of ongoing snagging so it's not the bland canvas problem free set up you might imagine. The main issue for me is no scope as the plots are quite small so extensions aren't really possible in a lot of cases.
On the pro side there's a lot of families on our estate so nice for the children, we got to spec the house choose kitchen etc.