[Closed] New Build Housing

New build = all new, up to date and working (in theory). For some people those are key requirements. Not for others.

People buy new build for the finish and the 10 yr warranty run off.
cant stand them myself and the size of them is a scandal.

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Rental yields outside of the most desireable city residences are very low. great opportunity to rent at the moment even with prices falling.

Ive seen yields around 2-3% locally in worcestershire whereas its closer to 4-5% in London.

Admittedly that CABE survey is for London property.

New property "should" not require much maintenance for the first few years and seeing as we have been educated into becoming serial house movers some people won't have ever heard of maintenance as they never live anywhere long enough.

aP - true - I did think they were a bit unfair with their survey specification, but its still generally true that new builds by the big home builders are scandallously small.

It wont change until minimum size dimensions are incorporated into new build regs.

New property "should" not require much maintenance

this brings me to another point, damp, the old properties haven't smelt of damp, the new ones have....

plaster drying times can be very long indeed and if the house was closed up before fully drying there could be moisture in the air.

Having said that new builds also suffer from over use of non-porous materials and dont breathe as well as as older buildings.

It's mad isn't it!? There's a new build development at the end of my street, 6 "apartments" and 1 3 bed house. They want £200K for the house, it has tiny rooms, no garden and overlooks a main road. We had our 3 bed through end terrace valued at £140K and we have garden, views, off street parking etc. I don't get it!

stoner - its the free market you know 😉

housing a free market, LOL, planning, brown paper envelopes, greenbelt, NIMBY, etc.....

throw in the planning density guidelines, and you get what we have. rely on people to know no better and the builders are onto a winner.

Having seen how the bespoke house next door went up and having seen mass produced newbuilds the difference was a real eye opener. You can build a decent house and people do. Just not the Barrats, Persimmions, etc.

and who in their right mind would want to buy a new build house?

We came to this conclusion too.
New houses are 'detatched' by 3 feet. Why? Make them semis and have 1.5ft more space in each house.
Bathrooms - Why bother with en-suite when all you get is tiny bedrooms?
Kitchens - Too small to be of use. No workspace for cooking and a tiny 'dining area' that won't fit a decent table in it. I reckon it's because people don't cook any more and eat take aways in front of the TV.
Garages too small to fit a car in. Useless

Etc....

I don't think that's necessarily true.

that is the trouble with new build estates. They are designed by a group of people coming from the angle of "how may houses can we fit in this space" rather than a "if I was going to live here what is a reasonable sized room".

New housing tends to be built by people saying I have a requirement to make a profit for my shareholders so what can we fit on here in order to do that. Just like every other business.

Why?

Because it's what people want.

People want to say they live in a detached house.

People want to have an ensuite bathroom, a toilet on the ground floor and a family bathroom.

People want a garage (to store all the stuff that doesn't fit in the tiny house!)

People want new carpets/fittings/etc because it's better than old stuff innit

Which is all brilliant news for those of us who have other requirements and therefore pay less for what we think is more 🙂

agree - went round flats last week - moved into my 1907 stone built flat on the edge of the city with shed and garden and windows looking out at the mtb trails for about 200 quid less than the nearest modern flat in the center of town with no parking /garden/shed/inside space etc..

Which is all brilliant news for those of us who have other requirements and therefore pay less for what we think is more

Egg-Zakkly!
We looked at half a dozen new houses, before buying a 50's semi for £40-50k less that has doube glazing (Most of the new ones don't seem to have this) and a new 12ft wide garage with secure electric door, utility room, a decent amount of land and space between the other houses and good sized rooms.
😀

The maintenance guy for my flat (reletaively new build - last 10 years I guess) is also a builder and he says reckons alot of the totally new builds now require 3 weeks of drying out time with a dehumidifier.

Apparently the regs on insulation don't help as they are alot tighter on these regs than they are on ventilation so alot of new properties are under ventilated.

I lived in a rented new build a couple of years ago. The house was probably 2 or 3 years old but there were loads of cracks appearing in the plaster all over the place, especially on the stairs. I hated the place. Comeplete lack of character and you could here a fly fart 2 floors down because the walls were made of rice paper. I like proper bricks that don't look as though they would float.

I totally agree with Peter Poddy. We did the same as you, ending up with a 1950 build, all with decent bedroom sizes, although the lounge is tiny.

In these new builds the show homes are a joke. They furnish them with 3 quartre size beds,which are dressed to look like a double.
The lounge furniture is also of a smaller size.
The walls are really thin and gardens tiny, which is a shame as more people seem to want to grow their own food nowadays and keep chickens etc.

Our last house was a modern townhouse built in 1994 by a reputable builder, who had an excellant reputation in the area, so his houses were of a high stardard and desirable. So imo the builder has a lot to do with it.

I understand some of the arguments against them but it all depends on the particular development - I like living in my modern house with......

Good insulation, energy efficient glass, downstairs bathroom, en-suite, large family bathroom, separate utility room, modern electrics with integral RCD, condensing boiler, huge all new kitchen with all the integrated mod cons, 10 year defect guarantee - but that wouldn't be enough for me without the fact that outside my front door is the canal, ducks sit in the sun on my lawn and behind my house I've great views of Healy Nab, Rivington and beyond:)

Weigh that up against buying an older house with one bathroom, inefficient energy usage, constant maintainance, probably needs new kitchen etc. etc.

Everyones rquirements are different,especially at different stages in your life. Maybe I wont buy another new house, but certauinly cant say a bad word about mine..............wouldn't say no to an old farm house up around Rivington Village tho.

There is a lot of variation in new builds too, we bought one becuase the market had just slumped and the deal we got on it allowed us to jump on the ladder. We're not going to be here forever, so it'll do for now and means we're not burning money renting.

Ok its not got huge rooms, but its considerably better than the city centre flat we were in and having spent student years either in georgian piles with football pitch size rooms or box rooms smaller than a broom cupboard I'm not actually too bothered if the 3rd bed isn't huge, seen as it dosn't have anyone or anything in it ...

It dosn't have a huge garden, but I've got other life priorities than a huge rambling garden right now anyway, the garage can get 7 bikes, a heap of junk [b]and[/b] my GFs heap of junk car in it, off street parking in front of garage.

Its well ventilated, especially the bathrooms, which is a boon having grown up in a cramped victorian terrace with the coldest dampest steamiest bathroom you can imagine and the windows are double glazed with very high quality units (having worked as a window fitter this was one of the first things I looked at).

In contrast, for something with one less 'bedroom', a bit of character, more room space and more garden, we were looking at 70-80k more money, too far out for an acceptible commuting distance or in a region of the city that's reet dodgy, that needed a fair amount of work doing to it to bring the finish up to anywhere near the same standard.

So for us, a decent new build is more than good enough for now.

Some of the other new builds I've seen though ... sheesh.

Good insulation, energy efficient glass, downstairs bathroom, en-suite, large family bathroom, separate utility room, modern electrics with integral RCD, condensing boiler, huge all new kitchen with all the integrated mod cons, 10 year defect guarantee

Oh yeah, granted there's lots of plus points to new houses, and that suits a lot of people who aren't DIY inclined or have other priorities.
But I wouldn't buy one, after having a good look at several I think they are over priced and cramped.
We've got modern electrics, condensing boiler, huge kitchen, double glazing, BIG utility room, too. And the £40K+ difference in price enables us to fit a brand new bathroom (Pay someone to do it) in Art Deco style with underfloor heating and top quality fixtures and fittings, rather than the same basic stuff you get in all new houses. 🙂 That's going in the week after next, whilst we go away riding......
😀

What I don't get on new builds is that, even though average human height has steadily increased over the years, they build them with such low ceilings compared to 100 years ago. I feel almost claustrophobic in some new builds yet I am only small. I would hate to think what they must feel like to someone of 6ft+

Mind you a lot of new builds are now silly cheap - particularly ones in developments that aren't yet finished where the new price has dropped in the last three years. Friends of ours bought their flood plain new build (talk about bad choices...) for £200k and they now reckon they won't get more than £160k for it since the developper at the site is selling brand new ones as they're completed for £175k....

Fair Point PP - The house I had before this one was a Victorian mid-terrace - loads of room - but, after getting it re-roofed, rewired, DPC, wall ties, breaking out the kitchen floor in the out-rigger, putting in new windows, having all walls skimmed, replacing joists attached by wood beetles, new skirting and architraves, new kitchen, new bathroom - I'd done as much DIY as I could handle!

Hope I'm not coming accross as someone who preferes new houses to old houses as I'm not - its just that I prfered my new house over everything else we looked at - I dont think its fair to say all new houses are rubbish or all old houses are rubbish - just depend what suits your needs the best when youre looking to buy - Obv with you it was the one you went for.

If I ever do a fixer-upper again - I'll employ people to do the lot with zero involvement by me - I was a broken man at the end of my experience!

I don't get why new builds still look like houses from the 70s or 80s on the outside, but then try to be modern on the inside. If they made cars like these houses we'd be driving things that look like Mk3 Cortinas but with hybrid engines and radar guidance systems. In places like Holland and Belgium they're building new houses that look like new houses, that work well from an environmental standpoint and that people like living in - why can't we do that over here? (other than Prince fekking Chas sticking his oar in of course)

I think a lot of these new houses only get sold because of the huge incentives given to first time buyers or shared ownership schemes. For some people it's the only way to get on the housing ladder.

I rent a newish house (~4 years old, one that we couldn't afford to buy), it's a 3 bed detached which is perfect for 2 of us, there is no storage of any description, the 3rd room is a box room, even the master bedroom only just fits a double bed. Our neighbours either side have kids and slightly smaller houses, no idea how they fit!

The newer houses I've looked at have had a reasonable amount of space internally, but spreading rooms over 3 floors means even narrower houses and even less outdoor space. If you don't have a garage, which most don't, by the time you put a shed in for keeping a bike/lawnmower etc you've got no garden left!

Having worked and lived in both and seen the fabric of what's behind the finish, give me my 100 year old Victorian house any day. The Vickys were probably our first kit builders but at least they built with a bit of pride. I assume they were built for profit back in the day too but it just seems that more care was taken over the details.

The only new build I'd live in now is one for which I oversaw the building and choice of materials (and hopefully, not have to budget for materials and labour too much). New builds a la Barratt/McAlpine/Bovis etc etc are all bloody shocking. I'll be measuring up for skirting in say, a living room with a bay window. In a Victorian or Georgian or 20s house, you can be fairly sure the walls will be within a quarter of an inch of each other either side of the bay. In a new build, it could be as much as an inch out...not saying EVERY new build is like this, but most are. You go to pull off a bit of (pinned if you're lucky but most likely gripfilled) old skirting and you can see the whole crappy stud wall plasterboard coming towards you. There are gaps everywhere after a few years because the decorators were told to use cheap caulk. I could go on and on.

I know there are probably guys who use this forum that work on sites (ernie will be along to kill me) but when you see the quality of some of the people who work on them, it's no great surprise. Anybody who's any good at what he or she does gets sick of working to profit margins and goes off and does it for him or herself. Obviously there are good people too who don't want the hassle and prefer the regular wage, but they are in short supply.

I reckon the 20's was the last decade that we built quality housing on a large scale here (they were obsessed with symmetry back then, and so am I, so I'd think that anyway) - everything since the war has been crap.

joe avarage 'likes' mock georgian or whetaver style it is.

also try anything new with planners and generally you get laughed at most of the time.

town planners are a nightmare generally.

So the Barbican is crap is it?
I think that there's a lot of generalisations on here.
I don't build things but I am involved in the process by which they get built and modern buildings are pretty well put together, although of course there are always exceptions.
I am quite amused by all the people posting about how bad profit is. You do understand what the key point of running a business is don't you?