Owning your own home

Oh this is interesting. Wondered why no one has really attempted this yet. Basically your keeping external walls, and the roof line, thats about it!

In our own tenement found moderate PIR board (60-75mm?) in window boarding/woodwork and between plaster and external stone where it is the thinnest (bathroom under a window) made a big difference. And then getting the stone work re pointed with the right stuff (some cement had been pushed into some joints over the years) to 1) hold the stone up 2) reduce air gaps through stone that went directly into internal plaster wall in many places made a vast vast difference. Going further with insulation you then have to go 'whole hog' and achieve proper vapour barriers, proper insulation, proper consideration of all the through holes/cold bridges like remaking the wall top plates, floor joists, entire window surround restart from scratch. It becomes a huge task so interesting to see someone have a go, and from the looks of it, really do a neat job.

Though most tenements if in good condition use a lot less KWH/annum than your average 70's to 00's semi or detached type house sqm vs sqm

Anybody bought a new build from Persimmon?

I probably wouldn’t:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persimmon_plc

They built an entire block the wrong way round.

Yes, back in 2015 in the north west though.

They're supposed to be getting better, not sure they ever will... Considering a 4 BR around Wells/Street/Glastonbury. Their option (floorplan and location wise) fits the requirements very well, and "old" houses in the vicinity seem to be extra crusty or overpriced, or usually both.

The move is mainly due to school change and since it's 120 miles away I need it to go as smoothly as possible. Luckily(?) we're FTB.

Hey, welcome to Somerset :)

Anybody bought a new build from Persimmon?

A friend of mine did a few years ago. They put the roof frame on the wrong way round, so the loft hatch was in the master bedroom rather than the hall. Then after he'd bought the place and moved in, they turned up while he was out at work, moved the fence around the rear garden, pinched a bit of his rear garden, and put a lamp post and tarmac on it.

Mind you, I could tell you similar horror stories about most if not all major UK home builders. Like the house built by Taylor Wimpey where they forgot to add any cavity wall insulation whatsoever and failed to secure the solar panels on the roof, so they were just resting in place. They also built the house without getting planning permission for that design, and fitted the wrong size of front door. I think it took them about 3 years to mostly get the place sorted.

iirc them and bellway are on the shitter end of the major homebuilders. if you like the look/spec/location/price I probably still wouldn't be put off that much though.... would just factor in the cost of a snagging firm to visit

The company thay paid the director 135 million bonus. Wouldnt touch on principle. But having strong principles is expensive and annoying.

Depends if you want something built of cardboard on an ex-waste tip in a flood zone

The gardens will be made of clay, overlooked, noisy neighbours - don't do it.
As for crusty that is pretty much Glastonbury , and Wells too...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1aBUN8qELA

Not to mention all the phosphate pollution at the moment in Somerset. Wasn't it Persimmons that didn't put fire breaks in loads of houses recently?

But having strong principles is expensive and annoying.

True :)

Flood zone

Good shout, it's not exactly in one but there's a medium-risk area nearby. The site is on top of a hill though (but you descend down as you go further in). It's a joint development with Taylor Wimpey so some houses are theirs. Red flag? Don't know.

overlooked, noisy neighbours

Corner plot with 1 immediate neighbour (and the other neighbour's end of garden + parking on the other side) isn't bad in this case.

If all new builders are similar shittiness in one way or another, is the best way to rent for a year and wait for something to come up on the market and get shafted with crusty stuff instead of new stuff?

Seller has just pulled out with absolutely no reason given. The process in England is f**ked.

Wedmore is nice and these look ok - https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/121050242#/?channel=RES_NEW

Related and unrelated question, what's the deal with all the LVT kitchens? It looks nice yes but don't they swell up in wet conditions, like the old parquet/floorboards did?

If we were to pay that much more alternatives open up, but want to keep the monthly payments a sane amount, hoping to fully finish paying in less than 10 years.

Our experience in Wiltshire was to buy a 4 bedroom new build off plan in 2014 - which initally was great and reasonably quiet but then more people moved in, it got progressively noiser, more overlooked and although the house was very spacious and comfortable the surroundings started to feel oppressive.
we sold in 2019 and stayed at a friends for around 4 months whilst we waited for eveything to go through on the purchase of a late 60s 2 bedroom knackered bungalow with a fab garden and loads of potential in a great location, location, location.
Moral of the story is - it worked for us and we made a bit of £ over those 5 years but there is no way i'd want to live in a generic newbuild / estate again.
I prefer a bit of character although be prepared for all sorts of things going wrong in an older house. (including rats...)

:( sorry to hear that

absolute bummer mate :(

Word seems to be, go with a small 'local' type housebuilder. One where you can actually get to them if its a total shithouse (pun? yeah pun why not).

'Cala' are one that have the illusion of quality, and a price to match, but are just as much of a bunch of, as the rest of them.
Nearby they built a huge new estate, 'forgot' to fit + test the waste system adequately, so was just piling soil up inside a floor and wall area of a party wall in some flats. Everyone complained about the humidity/moisture in the flats, and then the smell, and the strange slushing sounds in the walls and eventually waste water outside the buildings soaking the ground out. Yup, from foundations to almost 1st floor level was packed full of waste water and soil from the various buildings dumping into it.
Nice guys.
Other tricks like 'lets build 500 + medium to large single family detached units on this old brown field site, gonna be 2-5 cars per house, lets just leave the entrance onto the main road as such a total liability that a cyclist was killed before anything happened. And even then, the council/regional roads fund footed a very large amount of £££ in order to redo the junction.

In the UK there is obviously a need for a constant pile of new housing stock to be produced, but we are now decades deep into a USA style new build suburban single family future slum hellscape and if anything its speeding up.
I wouldn't even mind if they were at least built well. My downstairs neighbour have just sold up and moved out of a tenement into a new build in Glasgow. They got their 1st look in the actual house unit they had bought on Wednesday, and already have had to get an independent house inspector involved, their flat is sold, their stuff is moved out, its now in storage and they are staying in a friends spare room, possibly for a while.
These guys are very chill/don't notice quite major things going wrong with a building, so for them on day 1 to say 'nope this is fucked, get the solicitor/housebuilding rep on the phone, we aren't moving into this' means its pretty bad.

A mate of mine was a private buyer on a housing association built new estate, end of Phase 1 out of 3 (terrible, never do it as you just don't know how long your gonna be living in a building site).
For them, unusually, it worked out. Phase 3 backed onto them (all in green field) and were supposed to get a garden around 5m deep and length of property line (biggest on street already as backed into a corner), maybe 20 or 25m long? New phase 3 lines were drawn up and moved the whole lot further up the hill. Their garden is now 20 or 25m and instead of 5m deep away from house, they've got more like 30m. Developer/builder redrew all the site lines/property boundary as basially some bad ground underneath where Phase 3 was supposed to go, so easier to strip half a street off and moved the boundaries up the hill a bit.

4 years on and its still a huge clay pit though. My man probably in around 100-120 tonnes of top soil and material now to get away from the clay pit aesthetic, french drains, pumped sump the lot. Looks amazing though. So you can luck out on these things, it does happen! The snag list inside the house took over 2 years (before C19 too!) to complete, and a bunch of finishing details/bad plaster/bad woodwork, they are now just living with as can't be done with the hassle any longer*

*This is what many larger organisations literally rely on, the sappy UK public just living with it, as the hassle > the end goal. Le sigh.

Word seems to be, go with a small 'local' type housebuilder.

I thought the risk here was that they'd go strategically bust if there were major issues.

I'm in a Bovis new-build. It was the show home so seems to have been built better/had issues fixed along the way. We've got one of the better plots too - it's boring but ticked all our boxes + so far nothing has broken and it's cheap to heat so ¯_(ツ)_/¯

In some parallel universe we bought that house on the Olympic park

Keep meaning to pop over and have a look.

Any mortgage experts here that can offer some advice - I'm wondering if there are any problems/pitfalls of applying for a mortgage with two different providers concurrently e.g. credit issues?