Buying off plan

[theunsure]

A small development of 6 houses is going up in the next village, 1 of which seems perfect for us. The footings are in but no walls yet.

Our house not on market yet as the local market completely stagnant in our price bracket, not seen anything we’d like in over 2 years.

We had 1 agent value ours in Dec and have the agent marketing this new build around tomorrow to value and also discuss the plot. We could market it immediately. There are only basic site and floor plans so far so not much to go on with new house but it is right size, right location. Houses meant to be ready in around 6 months. New build is prob only £10-20k more than value of ours (smaller upstairs, bigger downstairs than ours) so not anticipating any issue with mortgage and would probably port current deal plus borrow the difference to avoid a hefty early repayment charge.

Have never had a new build before, assume we can’t reserve until we have sold ours? I have read that they want you to exchange pretty fast. So someone is bound to snap it up before we can proceed.

Anyone managed to buy a new build essentially off plan when they had to sell first? I can see this becoming a right palaver to try and line it all up! I’m a bit lost with how it works with new builds off plan. Advice please!

Hi, it is very daunting and something I've only just saw got my head around! We exchanged start of December on our new build we are buying with a view to move in March's/April.
We looked at so many developments and most are keen to exchange within 4 weeks of reserving. If you are selling your house to purchase the new build you do need to be proceedable ie accepted an offer on your property, before they will let you reserve the plot.
In our case the developers wanted a £500 reservation fee and to exchange in 6 weeks. We actually ended up exchanging 10 weeks after, due to the buyers solicitor asking so many unnecessary questions, but we kept developers up to date and they were happy we thought that.
It may be worthwhile asking the developers i they have any show homes at other sites for the house you are interested in so you get a really good idea of the space and square foot.
Our house is same as the show home so was easy to decide it was right for us. But I did end up making a 2 hour drive to another site to view the show home of the one we liked!

Sorry I meant, I did once like a house on another development which was off plan so drove 2hrs to their other site as they had the house I liked as their show Home

Thanks that’s very useful to know.
We want to stay in this village or the next and there is no new building planned in the area (tiny villages, very rural) so it is this one or stay put! It is a farmer that has sold a field and using local builder so doubt there will be much else to view but we will want evidence of build quality and more info.

Suspect there will be an enormous amount of interest and the plot will go before we get a buyer. Ho hum! We don’t particularly want a new build, but we want the location.

We were about to reserve a plot with a National house builder but gave just swapped to a local house builder on a small rural development.

In both cases, in order to take the reservation you have to be proceedable (minimum of sold STC) so that you can exchange within 28 days. Even for a house that they're not even going to start working on until the summer!!

Best you can do is ask!