New House Problems

[Punta]

Hi all...first post!

We bought a house and moved in last week -part of a chan that seemed to rumble along for a while.

A couple of things in the house aren’t as great as we had hoped! For example, when we viewed the house the bathroom had an oak vanity unit. The vendors, after we put our offer and at the point of accepting, said it was an anniversary gift (I’m guessing to themselves) and could they take it if they swapped to another unit of same standard. I said yes and when we moved in found it’s a white high gloss unit and not oak. This bugged me a bit, but not a huge issue. Another thing...new bathroom suite, rainfall shower. It is literally like standing in the rain, the pressure is so poor. That’s another one I’m overlooking, as we should have checked that before buying and we had planned to update the boiler anyway.

The thing that I am posting about is that we bought it as a kitchen with integrated dishwasher. In my old kitchen, we didn’t have one and no room for one, so I was looking forward to having a dishwasher again (yes, I know!)

Switched it on to try to use it and didn’t seem to work. My husband looked up the error code etc and couldn’t work out the problem. We got an engineer out who said it hadn’t seemed to have worked for a while and would cost £80 to repair, but we might be better getting a new one as we might end up repairing one thing after another.

Is there anything I can do about this? Was I wrong to expect a working dishwasher? Can I go back and ask for money to replace it?

I think this may also fall under ‘should have checked’ although it’s pretty shit of them. The trouble is you can’t absolutely prove that it didn’t work when they left if. I think you may just have to suck it up, sorry.

All seems pretty standard to me, it is up to you as the buyer to check.

I was afraid as much! In our old house, the electric shower front needed replacing because the dial kept getting stuck. We replaced that -I suppose you just assume everyone would do the same!

My sister bought a house where the boiler wasn’t working and she got a small amount of compensation, but she is hard faced and bolshy ha!

If the dishwasher was listed in the items included in the sale it should be in working order. I would speak to you solicitor on this point.

The shower isn’t an issue - it works - you should have turned it on when viewing to see it’s power - I always do.

The vanity unit is replaced so nothing you can do, unless in the details of the purchase it was described as being replaced with an oak frame. Aesthetics aren’t something you can complain about.

The dishwasher was listed as an item included in the sale.

The vanity unit was supposed to replaced ‘like for like...same quality etc. I’m ok about that thought. It still looks nice and not too expensive to change if we ever decide to do that in the future.

The shower - totally our fault. We didn’t check. This should be resolved when we change the boiler anyway and can add a pump if needed.

Either way, we still love the house and the area and that’s the main thing.

Shower - your fault, always turn on showers and flush toilets etc.

Dishwasher - very sneaky of them but TBH unless you explicitly asked if they were working its just tough. At least you have space for one, just have to pay for a new one.

Vanity unit - 'like for like' was a bit of a dodgy ask really, probably the white one is better than a cheaper fake wood one? Annoying for sure but handled badly at the outset - would have wanted to see what they were replacing with.

Anyway, focus on the fact you bought a house... the vanity unit and DW really don't matter in the grand scheme of things.

Absolutely...love the house. And I think there are definitely some areas we would handle differently with hindsite!

‘Like for like’ was what the vendor said they would replace with and it was solid oak.

It was a stressful time as our buyer was desperate to move in so was putting pressure on us to move, and our vendor kept changing dates etc so in the end we were so desperate to move, we probably didn’t help ourselves.

I wanted to move back to my home town for several reasons but the main one was that my mum was diagnosed with cancer earlier last year and I wanted to be nearer to her. Sadly, she died in October, so I probably wasn’t in the best frame of mind mentally to move.

Ask yourself whether any of these issues would have stopped you buying the house had you known.

Would you have even bothered delaying things (with the risk/cost that entails) in order to negotiate via the 2 solicitors over a dishwasher, vanity cabinet and shower?

I doubt it.

In the scheme of new house "surprises" you have got off very lightly (believe me...my new kitchen fund went on replacing a Septic tank!!!).

Don't get overly focussed on these small things, just sort them out and enjoy your new home.

Thanks everyone

You’re right...we pushed on because we wanted the house and in the grand scheme of this, they don’t matter.

If you asked my husband one of my faults, he would definitely say overly focusing or making a fuss about small things!