Can I have your selling and buying a new build stories please?

[sillysausage92]

We were FTB a few years ago and bought a new build with a HTB loan. It was never going to be our forever home but we have stayed longer than we planned. We bought it pre Covid times and it has had a nice healthy increase in value.

We now want to move to a new new build 😁 we want to upsize and have found the perfect house we want with a developer in a nice area. It's off plot as the style we want are not built yet (or even released to reserve yet) there are 5 due for completion next year of the style we want.

The plan is to put our house up for sale around the time 2 of the plots are released, the sales rep told us they can do part exchange only if the plot isn't reserved by the 3 months into the build. So we are either going to secure an offer on the market for our home and then hopefully that coincides with one of the plots being available to reserve or if one of them is not reserved by 3 months into the build we will part exchange.

Sorry this is so long winded! Anyway I was hoping if anyone had any experience of selling a property and buying a new build off plan? Did it go as it should, was there huge delays? How did your buyer respond to you buying a new build, were they happy to wait when there are inevitable delays with the build? I know the developer stipulates exchange in 6 weeks from reservation so just wondered what everyone's experience of this was so that we go into this with eyes wide open.

Thank you 😊

We did it three years ago and while it was a nightmare, it was ultimately worthwhile.

Bought off plan and while the groundwork was done and foundations in, build time was scheduled to be about twelve months (so definitely not a throw it up quick merchant).
No PX available and we had to exchange within six weeks of reserving so developer would not even entertain you if you were not already SSTC.
Exchange took longer than six weeks and this was the very stressful part with us chasing our EA and the developer constantly saying we would loose the house but ultimately it happened and we exchanged. Agreed with our buyer for a five month gap between E&C and when that happened we moved into another property we already owned until the NB was ready (another six months).
NB was available pretty much on schedule, date did move a bit and if you were in a chain or rental this had the potential to cause problems so be prepared.

Speaking to our new neighbours all had similar stories with some renting a house for twelve to eighteen months, staying with family or some who (like us) had another property they could stay in.

Bonus was that we were able to watch every aspect of the construction and select options that were not available on a house close to or already completed.