Buying a Bellway Home 2024

[BellwayHomeOwner]

To raise awareness for new buyers of new builds, what would you share to help others?

Our experience is this:

I can't recommend Bellway Homes or any new build for that matter now. We would opt for a newly renovated 2nd hand home based on our experience with Bellway Milton Keynes. Once you purchase your home, you are no longer a customer, you are a liability in their eyes. A tragic, stressful, under regulated, self-regulated industry. Spoon-fed professional articulated pre constructed sentences and delivered shoddy unchecked, unsupervised work that will need continuous improvement only via continuous negotiation with the developer to convince them things need doing. Made to feel like they are doing a favour even though sold hundreds of defects that were not checked pre-completion. A massive shock to the system after reading all the excellent marketing material and listening to their sales teams. Nothing will prepare you for the stress, and lack of flexibility in the warranty process that will have you stumped in so many ways. The sales process will render you defenceless when the product delivered does not match the marketing material or the sales pitch. My advice is for anyone - Only buy what you can see, and ensure you have the flexibility to use your own people to do the work on anything in your home. Buying a new build is a prison sentence. All over Bellway Milton Keynes foundations have been put down months ago in 2022 and 2023 to avoid new building regulations out in 2024. Within the first few weeks of completion we were put under pressure to give Bellway a high score in the NHBC survey. More awareness needs to be raised to help peoples expectations when entering this type of life process.

My advice?

Do not, ever, buy a new build.

Pokey, no storage, poor quality and pretty soulless

Well, mine’s not pokey at 1600 sq ft, nor is it Bellway. There are only one or two developers I would ever consider and even fewer volume ones.

Can you share which developer you purchased from? Thanks

Berkeley

It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than most of the others around. What I’d look at in the future would be a small niche local builder. I wouldn’t look at any of the big ones and Berkeley would probably be out of our range now.

square footage means bugger all

it is about what has been squeezed in to that square footage!

I bought a new build recently. I agree with what you say OP - I viewed a few new build estates in the area and the big house builders all looked the same - crammed into the road, no front gardens, maybe a strip of flower bed, no garages. It all looked very stark.

In the end we bought one from a local company - more expensive but they have made an effort with the area, roads are a bit wider, there's small front gardens, pavement has grass between you and the road. We've been in 4 months & we are having a few issues with garden drainage which they are really reluctant to get involved with even though there's a number of us affected.

As soon as you've bought they're not interested. We're having to get it landscaped at our own expense as we can't live with a bog instead of grass.

A kitchen/ diner that’s 20 feet by 15 feet. A living room that’s 15 feet by 15 feet. A bedroom that has space for a super king bed, two large bedside tables, a blanket chest, dressing table, two double wardrobes, en suite with bath and double shower, two bedrooms with king size beds and a craft room.

So not squeezed at all.

525 square feet on lounge kitchen diner

leaving 1075 for 3 large double bedrooms, 1 study, two bathrooms, staircase, entrance area, landing, hallways and all storage.

Sounds like a mary poppins bag!

In any event, i don’t think it’s at all inaccurate to say that compared with non new build properties…. new build properties generally compare poorly when talking about ceiling height, storage and square footage (and what they squeeze in to the square footage) for similar price of non new build in same location

@Bluevelvetsofa
PS your house sounds lovely by the way!

Only on MN could one poster say that their house isn't pokey and another argue the toss with them!

People always say new builds are pokey or tiny, but that hasn't been my experience in my area. The gardens tend to be smaller, but that's about it.

We're looking to move and all the existing houses round here have galley kitchens, a small lounge and a dining room big enough for a medium table. The bedrooms are two or three rooms you can fit a double bed and wardrobe in and a box room that barely fits a single bed and wardrobe. Half of them don't have downstairs toilets and none have en-suites.

The new builds are twice the size in comparison, or if the same size then the way they're laid out makes them feel more spacious.

There are many things not to like about new builds, but saying they're smaller than existing housing stock just isn't true in a lot of areas.

It is not just my opinion

https://constructionmaguk.co.uk/are-new-build-properties-getting-smaller/

Studies show that the average living room of a new build in 2020 was nearly 20% smaller than the average home in the 50s.

The average bedroom in the 1960s was 15.05m squared but this has decreased rapidly since, with a decrease of over 1 per cent all the way into the 2010s.

**One interesting issue about new-build homes in the United Kingdom in the past decade is they are getting smaller. A study undertaken by LABC Warranty suggests the size of new-build homes reduced by four square metres since 2010.
The study examined average property sizes across 20 leading cities in the UK. The most startling finding of the study was that in the past 40 years, new-build homes have decreased in size by 20% — the typical new-build property averages 67.8 square metres. **

Two obvious suggestions. Have the property professionally snagged before entry and don't buy any with an estate charge - see fleecehold.

Except that new build properties include a huge number of flats, so the figures are obviously going to skew smaller than the 50s when they were a lot less common.

a rather poor study of 40,000 properties if they didn’t build in factors such as these in to its testing and output

But are you comparing like with like? How much more do those new builds cost? You get more for your money with a second-hand house. Some of the posher new builds round here are not as poky as the usual new build, but they cost about 50% more than the current value (estimate) of ours for about 2/3 of the floor space, and are on a plot a lot less than a quarter of the size. They will also fall down or need major structural work long before ours, which is relatively speaking built like a tank compared to the new-build being a garden shed. They would be cheaper to heat, is about all, and generally have larger kitchens- though older houses can be knocked through like ours to provide a larger one.

I'm told by tradesmen working for us that the design life of new-builds these days is 70 years. Ours has been up for 100 without having any structural work bar two extensions, and after we've done it up (again, nothing structural was needed) will still be going strong for another 100.
The very poshest new houses are up for abut 2x what ours is worth, and are slightly bigger, less well built, bang on a main trunk road, with a skimpy front and a tiny, very sloping back garden. Our garden is, again, factors larger.

The best era for large, light rooms is the 1960s, unless you're at the top of the market, where you can always get big rooms. If we could have got a big enough garden, I'd have gone for 1960s this time round.

Which site in Milton Keynes??😥
Did you have a professional snagger? And what were the issues?
Im in the process and can relate to some of what you’re saying! 😶

I bought a bellway home in 2014, had no issues at all. Lived there for 9 years. Just moved into another new build, but different developer, so far so good.