Has anyone here done it before?
I’m looking to buy my first property via the scheme through Barratts and am wondering if there is any scope to haggle, or is the price pretty much set in stone?
The flat I was looking at doesn’t come with carpets which I thought was pretty ridiculous, but the sales lady was adamant that it wasn’t even something they could work in to a deal!

Also, if I needed to let it out at some point in the future would this be possible? I know under the shared ownership scheme it is not, but i’m hoping the firstbuy scheme (not being shared ownership) would allow this.

The price will definitely be negotiable. Have any identical properties been sold yet? Look around your area at house prices and at places like houseprices.co.uk to get an idea of what the property will be worth and make an offer based on that. Your first offer should be embarrassingly low as you actually want it to be rejected.

If you look at historic house prices for identical new builds, you can see some variation in the prices paid. Those paying the least will have driven the hardest bargain – do that. Don’t be the poor guy who pays 20% over the odds! Bloke downstairs from me paid 17k more than me for a slightly worse condition flat, just 4 months before I got mine. Bear that in mind…

The flat I was looking at doesn’t come with carpets which I thought was pretty ridiculous, but the sales lady was adamant that it wasn’t even something they could work in to a deal!

That’s a classic sales trick I believe. They’ll let you think you’ve got a good deal when they appear to cave in and give you the carpets. Don’t fall for it, do your research…

I thought it might be a sales trick :/

There’s no recent data on the land registry sites – the flats haven’t even been finished yet, a few are sold according to their price list…

The flat is on for £159,999, go in with an offer of £145,000 and see what they say?

Well, what would a similar flat cost locally? Average selling prices are about 10% under asking price so you should certainly be offering less than that. If they haven’t sold lots then you’ve got plenty of time to do as much research as you can. Times are not good in the housing market, these people NEED you much more than you need them at the moment. Use that to your advantage. Also bear in mind that if the market falls another 10% next year you could be buying the same place FIFTEEN THOUSAND POUNDS cheaper after just one year. That buys a lot of biking bits 😉

All very good points – Thank you squire!
Looks like i’ll be doing a bit of research tonight 🙂

give gthe flat a very thorough going over.

i used to do work on lots of their sites around essex/london. Barrats, in my experience, aren’t one of the UK’s top builders… not workmanship (although that does and can go astray), but more from materials perspective.

and i don’t ever remember a house being handed over without carpets or some sort of flooring.

Chojin, I work for barratts (senior project manager) and there is always room for negotiation and haggle as much as you can, even if you can’t get a cash discount try and get some additional items included. Also barratts are the only 5star builder that I am aware of, this is achieved via feedback from customers and is collated by external companies, the current customer feed back for my region is approx 97 percent. Contary to popular myth most developers want to look after their customers as any negative publicity can destroy reputations in a time when sales are very few and far between. Remember it’s a buyers Market so haggle as much as you can, all barratts regions set monthly sales targets so are very keen to get plots sold. The first buy scheme is very good and a good way of getting onto the property ladder, everyone is a winner, you get the property you want with a five year warranty with barratts/nhbc and barratts makes another sale rather than you going to another developer, if you want any further info email me (email in profile)