We have lived in a number of new builds, not one has had a management fee by the way, the council maintained the area, I think we've gotten unusually lucky with that though!
So in my experience it depends on budget and area, in our last house we definitely could have gotten a much bigger house for our money, but without the mod cons we wanted (aka more than one toilet!) with this house move our budget was much larger, and as such the house itself is probably the same if not actually bigger than the older houses available for our budget. We have a 4 bed with double garage, 2 bathrooms (3 x WC) BUT the garden is small, no denying that, it didn't matter to us as we just need a nice area to dine, a seating area and a play area and it has that, but it is very small for the size of the house. Other plots have bigger gardens, but we loved our plot. That was the biggest compromise but for us worth it. Check the direction of the sun and the houses around it.
The key when choosing a plot is to look at its position on the estate and the parking available, we picked an end of cul de sac plot that gives us effectively 4 parking spaces, it's an estate of detached properties all with 2 parking spaces and a garage so parking isn't too much of an issue here, we didn't want people walking past our house. But our last estate was more classic new build parking on roads, again we were end of cul de sac with some sneaky extra parking on our plot due to the angle. Priceless.
Look at the layout of the houses next to yours, what windows back onto yours? Our estate is quite clever in that even though houses are close to each other, the estate is configured in a way that the houses behind us are angled so the windows that look at our garden aren't major living spaces, it's the fourth bedroom or frosted hallway window.
Not all estates are built equally. Our estate has had the "award winning site manager" for 2 years in a row, he has a lot to prove and as such our post move experience has been excellent. They even popped by after the storm last month, months after we moved in, to check all was ok (it was). We had a snagging report done, he said it was one of the best houses he'd seen and he'd be happy with it, the report was passed to them and everything was fixed within a couple of weeks, very minor things. I know some people can have really bad experiences with this, so research not just the developer but the development as each site is managed differently. Houses are built by people, mistakes happen, what's important is how the site manager deals with it, so expect snags but research the customer experience.
Negotiate incentives, it's usually difficult to negotiate the price, incentives are where you can get savings. The usual ones are (accepted by mortgage companies) kitchen upgrades, flooring, stamp duty, removals and mortgage cash back. All though these are all different items, they usually see it as an overall figure. If you want £10,000 of incentives, either work out what that is to you eg stamp duty and flooring, or be blunt and ask them to save you £10,000. We did the latter, basically said we needed X amount to proceed and they amended incentives to fit to it.
You will have to exchange within 4-6 weeks. It's extremely stressful if you are selling a house, they will chase you emphatically, but generally speaking, if you can demonstrate progress they will stick with you. But I do know people who have lost out, this was the one part of the process I hated and didn't go well for us, we nearly lost this house in the 11th hour. It was awful and I hated the developer at that time.
All in all we've had positive experiences with new builds. We haven't had management fees, have had plenty of parking, have chosen plots that aren't too overlooked and with nice outlooks, and this house in particular is the perfect size for us, configured for modern living and energy efficient. I know people talk about "premiums" but how much money do people normally spend when they buy a house? Correcting decoration, replacing a boiler, electrics etc? We didn't need to do any of that (particularly due to our incentives) so for people with less cash up front it can be an easier financial choice. We still made a profit on our last house selling within 3 years, and the new builds here have held very well, some exceptionally, because the new build area itself is the most desirable area of the town. So it's worth looking at how new builds have held their prices in your area. But if it's a long term purchase, Covid and Brexit aside, new builds will eventually make a profit, it depends where as to how quickly, in some areas it's faster than their older counterparts.
Sorry that is A LOT, I'm a bit passionate about it because they get such a bad rap on here, but we've had a great experience with them and I love them.