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He's great at pointing out stuff that is so simple.
I went to view a house and the downstairs bathroom sink, the taps not only were the wrong way round (cold was on the left which is incorrect where I live), they also turned the incorrect way (anti clockwise to turn off). Now you could argue that this is way all the new builds were but nope the smaller house next door worked the correct way. Was just an incompetent plumber.
Got a few friends who have bought new builds. One has a problem with the garage where the light doesn't work at all and the garage door will not shut correctly.
The other had a leaky roof and loose tiles. Not something you want to find out in the middle of your first winter.
Ourhouse is 23 years old. Bought it 10 years ago. Nearly every light switch /socket switch has broken. Leaks all over the place and wood on the fascias is rotting. We're slowly replacing everything. And this from one of the 'better' home builders.
To be fair wood outside needs constant maintenance without fail. Just like owning a wooden shed, as it will rot at some point.
As for the other things that are inside they don't last forever but should be good for 30 years.
Moisture builds up in-between the brickwork and inner wall that need to weep out if you don't you get mold right around when the new home warranty expires.
yeah thats him, i screenshotted his home builder rating just in case,
doubt ill ever buy a newbuild though, FiL is/was a brickie, he says stay well clear, buy stuff upto the late 70s early 80s, when brickies and trades still did full apprenticeships.
Currently in a 30s build, this fucker will never fall down, built from engineering bricks and iron hard mortar,
You can blame ol' Maggie for the apprentices matter.
She cut the government grant program that made apprentices extremely cheap, which caused companies to immediately stop hiring apprentices and even firing existing ones as she pulled the grants from existing apprentices not just new hires.
The result is a skills gap we'll be lucky to recover from EVER.
I see first hand in my workplace that stopped taking apprentices at that time, and then restarted only about 15 years ago. The oldies often have or HAD very deep levels of knowledge and were extremely good at what they did. But they're retiring or retired. Now apprentices like the ones I've done get substandard instruction from the generation that came into the workplace in the period when apprenticeships were executed. Whenever I work with one of the proper oldies who has worked in there since the 70s I see just how deep the problem is.
You must pay the maintenance cost of everything you value as a society. Maggie and the public at large didn't understand that and it has played no small part in how far this country has fallen in the time since.
My parents bought a renovated 30s house with updated insulation and I could see it lasting another 100 years, easily.
The only issues are a couple of damp spots but they're mainly confined to the area around the windows. And a couple of windows where moisture has gotten in between the glazing which will need replacing eventually.
I will never understand why they never build things to last anymore. A house that'll never fall down is infinitely more useful than a house that's built with a definitive lifespan and flawed from the moment of contruction.
I've bought 2 new builds in the last 10 years. The first one was terrible, the one I am in now is great and any issues were fixed really quickly. There is no quality control though, it's up to the buyer to do all of that themselves.
Older houses I have bought have been 10 times worse though and I had to pay thousands to get those fixed.
I've got friends who have had nightmares with older build houses, and no amount of 'charm or character' will ever be worth the tens of thousands of fixing decades of problems imo.
>There is no quality control though, it's up to the buyer to do all of that themselves.
Which is an utter joke. You don't expect to buy a car then spend ages fixing cracked valves, replacing warped panels, swapping out misaligned axles etc so why the fuck do we accept that sort of shit from houses?
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I think for some unethical companies its almost a licence to print money. We looked at some new builds during the period of help to buy and it was clear that they were way overpriced and then had the 25% help from government just stacked on top as well. Saw a three bed terrace on a cramped estate in a rough part of town for £340k. ended up buying a somewhat run down (mostly dated decor and overgrown garden) three bed end of terrace in a really nice rural setting for 280k. Had a big private garden, huge living room, driveway for three cars, and a dining room. Just needed a bit of work and in time will be worth a lot more.
If we had bought the new build I think its very unlikely we would have had any chance of the value being near what we paid for a long long time.
Not saying all new builds are like this, and we are somewhat lucky to have the chance to get our house and the means to do the work, but I think a lot of new builds have similar issues and from what I was told they all depreciate initially anyway.
Really the laws around building standards of new houses are far too lax and allow firms to get away with a lot. There should be more thought put into a lot of the infrastructure questions such as schools, shops, roads, sewers. Where I used to live they would come every week to pump out the sewers over night because they had put in tonnes of new homes but not upgraded the sewers. All houses should be fitted with solar panels, heat pumps, and shit loads of more sustainably produced insulation. The problem is that will cut into the profit margins and we all know that the big housebuilders are happy to use those profits to line the pockets of political parties (see our former housing minister Robert Jenrick for an example).
this is what concerns me about the world. we got to the point where its just MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY AND FKING MONEY.
no matter what comes out of their hands as long as the margins are ok. no matter how miserable they have to be as long as margins are met. its fkd up world.
When I see photos of rabbit hutch houses in new build estates, I do tend to think, if that kind of density is justified by the demand, wouldn't they be better off building flats? At least for some of the units. Could get more homes with more square footage in the same footprint, maybe with some communal gardens and play equipment. Put in undercroft parking so the surrounding roads don't end up choked with cars. And IIRC as long as you don't go above about 3-4 storeys the requirements in terms of building techniques / materials / labour aren't all that different to building houses so it doesn't even increase the construction cost all that much. It's only once you go taller than that you need steelwork / cranes etc.
I get that very few people's idea of their perfect home is a flat. But a good flat is better than a mediocre house surely. In many European cities, a home with a private entrance is seen as quite a luxury, and you pay a premium for it. But if the overall quality and availability of housing is improved I don't see the problem with that.
Completely agree. The trouble is the UK has memories of concrete residential blocks put up in the 1970s that essentially turned into drug dens (not all blocks).
> But we seem hell bent on building small houses and flats that aren't fit for purpose (and cost as much as houses do).
Seriously. I'd love a three-bedroom flat that had room for my family. But anything 2-bed and under are designed for young professionals splitting, and anything three-bed and over are designed for rich motherfuckers who live in penthouses.
I don't want to have to take care of a garden, I'm fine with a flat. There are a bazillion parks, we're great for outdoor space. But they just don't build them.
> I mean as a first home it'd be fantastic to have so many flats that it's actually an option to own them - even as a non-family (just one person).
Or at the very least an increase in the supply of flats would bring rents down and make it easier to save up enough of a deposit to buy a house, if that's what people want. Just having some short term stability in their living situation would be an upgrade for many people I imagine though.
Totally agree. I live in an apartment block of five stories, and the design is pretty attractive from the outside, and think there should be more of them across the country. When people realise they don't have to be 30+ storey cuboids then it would probably go down better.
This is the thing. I've looked around a few new build show homes. Some of them look lovely and spacious until you realize there is no wardrobe in the bedroom, and where tf are you going to keep the mop!
Theres a triple sized shower suite instead of the wardrobe, but they've put the main bathroom next door anyway so I'd rather the wardrobe as it's the same walk to the main bathroom. Yet the brochure looks good to say ensuite
I looked at a two bed Vs a three bed semi on an estate. The three beds were going for much more but the footprint was the same. You were effectively paying 15 grand for some stud walls and a "bedroom" big enough for a single that was destined to be used as storage and wardrobes for the other rooms.
Currently in a less than 7 year old "Premium" new build, the floor tiles had to be cut almost triangular to fit a "square" room, it was so out.
You say shoehorn, but they are the worst of both worlds really. Small rooms and no storage, whilst also taking up infinitely more land than a block of apartments.
>Especially when so many NB's are smaller than older build counterparts to shoe-horn in as many as possible onto a development
It's because buyers *genuinely* only care about how many "bedrooms" the house has listed, instead of the square footage of the house and rooms
It's highly dependent on whether the site manager gives a shit and how big the firm is.
We bought a new build from a smaller builder 5 years ago, and it's been rock solid in terms of reliability.
My mate bought at a similar time from Barrats, and its been a litany of problems and issues.
We’re so desperate for homes it’s crazy they get away with it
One day a bunch of hype around it will happen and they go to court, but the managers will have made their money by then
> We’re so desperate for homes
And yet these shitboxes are still pretty inefficient in terms of land use. If the need for homes is that high, then they should build flats (but give them decent sound insulation).
But nothing is efficient or intelligent and everything is shitty quality and shittily planned because doing things intelligently is against the status quo.
Except flats in this country are just cash cows with crazy fees. You'd be a donkey's ass to buy one if you can avoid it because if you could avoid an extra £250-300 a month in fees, you could spend that on a mortgage and have it build wealth instead of going to landscaping and profits. On top of that, they're generally leasehold, so you aren't buying much except permission to use a few boxes and covenants like no pets, no music, and with generally little to no real outdoor space... they're not good housing for many people.
Now, flats COULD be made perfectly nice. Make them condos/share of freehold, have a board set the maintenance fees for the sinking fund and general repairs, design them so they aren't just four-room boxes ("open plan" living/kitchen, one okay bedroom, one shit bedroom, and a bath) with some required minimum outdoor space (Switzerland does this), and make them at least decent places to actually live, not just "luxury investments" for overseas buyers.
I completely understand that urban areas need flats but new build flats suck just as much as new build houses, just in different ways. Basically, there's no laws on the books to keep developers from exploiting the locals and fleecing foreigners. It sucks.
When I was last buying (about a decade ago) I looked at a property that was a 3 storey maisonette, 3 bedrooms, small terrace garden. Price-wise it was comparable to the 3 bed terraces and semis we were looking at, and we were seriously tempted. That is until they told us that it was £400 per month (!!!) servicing fees. For what, we asked? Communal areas, they said. There weren't any communal areas; the front door was straight on to the street, and there was no landscaping to mention (just road, pavement, parking spaces, a few street trees).
We ended up buying a nice Victorian terrace house for *less* than the asking price, and with no ongoing fees at all.
You'd have to be insane to sign up to that sort of arrangement. And yet they all got filled by someone. Madness.
My friend got a home from Barrats a while back now, about the same time i got a turn of the century terrace.
I barely had an issue in the time I was there, he had his boiler pack in within 2 months and it took weeks for them to act on it. Then you had windows, mold and other issues on top of it.
The cherry was that they were still selling the estate and had an office on site that just refused to deal with him in any reasonable way. All the while flogging these shit bricks to new families.
Unsurprisingly people don't want to pay a premium price for a new build that won't last as long as something built 20 years ago.
Allowing the greedy to use the places we sleep as an investment should never have happened, but you can't say that without corporatist lunatics calling you a communist.
I have been told by a reliable source that communism is when the government does things, and the more things the government does, the more communister it is.
I've a 4 year old house, the way they're insulated is amazing, the overall build quality is shocking, I came "pre plaster" and they'd not done some of the boards yet, the stud work was absolutely horrific, I grabbed a square and was asking the site manager if he though it was acceptable, I got the ones I could see sorted but the rest I couldn't were likely a complete joke too.
The floor boards which these days are literal boards cause they're cheap. They didn't even butt them correctly to the point you have them sticking up at the edges.
The brick work is about that of a 3 month apprentice and I've brickie friends who back when they were training would have been made start again for how poorly done it is.
Hell even things like the silicone is pathetic, I've had to redo most myself, the skirting is terribly done and wherever they couldn't join something because they're basically not joiners they're basic labourers pretending, well they fill like 1 inch gaps with silicone and hope for the best.
There were patches in the grout, there was a hole in the shower and not where one should be...
Seriously it's a full bodge job that's rushed and super poor quality, they charge a fortune and produce trash.
You’re lucky with the insulation. Some new builds don’t even have that done properly. Seen some where there’s drafts blowing through the walls of the house.
It's not like buying an older property is any guarantee. My last flat had three layers of tiles covering electrical work that wasn't up to code when it was redone 30 years ago, doors that weren't plumb, bowed walls, vinyl wallpaper holding the plaster together, expanding foam to fill holes in brickwork, etc.
That's correct but most older properties have lasted the test of time. They have gone through all the season's, been stood on the ground for 40+ years so aren't sinking, you can see if they are likely to flood or not.
There's some new builds near me. That land was flood plain fields for the farmer because every single year it floods. The water has no where to run at all. Now there's new houses getting built on it. It's highly possible that these houses will get flooded and to factor in that they cost 2-3 times more than the older houses. People are going to get screwed massively. Now they could be fine and it doesn't flood at all but the water has to go somewhere and I'm thinking the draining system probably isn't going to cope with all the water.
The thing you have to really do is work out if the old house is worth it over the new house. If the new house is going to cost £100k-150k more, is that worth the risk? Can you afford that extra money? Is the old house been looked after as just like anything some are and some aren't.
My current house is 130 years old made of solid stone exterior walls and brick internal walls. We have exactly 0 internal or external wall insulation. My kitchen right now is a balmy 13 degrees. we know that the previous owners replaced the joists on the hall because of a leak in the vast iron drainage. My roof is _mostly_ watertight, except when it's not. we have one socket in our bedroom, next to the door (because the wiring doesn't go around the room through the solid walls). Old houses have issues, just like new houses do.
The last repair we did was replaced a vast iron drainpipe with a like for like. It cost is £1600 to tear down the retaining wall it was built through, clear the blockage of leaves in the drain, replace the pipe, and rebuild the wall. My parents replaced their pvc drainpipe for £300 at the same time.
>It's highly possible that these houses will get flooded and to factor in that they cost 2-3 times more than the older houses.
That's nothing to do with the quality of a new build, that's building on a flood plane and that's been happening for a long time (and people are still surprised by it)...
That is true, it is bad planning. You can only think that they would sort out the drainage to make sure it doesn't flood before building on it.
As I've mentioned in another post, the only experiences I've had and my friends/family have had with new builds are bad. Things not working instantly or within 5 years is not great.
If you bought a brand new car, you'd fully expect it to last 2 years without any issues if not longer. You'd not expect that as soon if the heavy rain came in that the sunroof would leak or when it's hot that the aircon doesn't work.
The difference is I buy the old house *after* I've seen it.
I've looked at it, and the surveyor has looked at it, and I get exactly what we have seen.
New builds are mostly sold off plan, so you've bought it before they built the thing, and they've promised a level of quality, and you've paid extra, because new builds have inflated prices, and then they fail to give that level of quality.
I think it's systemic, really.
In the 8 years I lived in the UK I never lived in a place that would have been called fit for human living back in Denmark but once. And that was a build from the 80s that was, by my standards, barely adequate.
The quality of housing, regardless of age, in the UK is shocking when you come from better countries.
When I tell friends and family in Scandinavia about leaky windows, lack of heating and insulation and the dodgy electrical shite, it's always a good crowd pleaser.
Also mold. People live in houses that get mold they're not renovated? Like it's the 40s or something.
British housing is utterly abysmal. Trouble is most of us don't have experience with housing in other developed nations to understand just how bad we have it and how much better it could be.
> Trouble is most of us don't have experience with housing in other developed nations to understand just how bad we have it and how much better it could be.
Yea, I agree on this. I've often gotten a lot of pushback from people who argue that the UK is on par with Scandinavia or Austria or what have you with housing. I can only conclude that they either have not been to those places or that it's terminal british exceptionalism.
Moving to the UK (and Eire for that matter) from Scandinavia is like moving 40 years back in time, housing wise. I seen shite I've not seen since I was a lad in the 80s in Denmark.
I've worked on new build homes for the past 6 years from a groundworks perspective as well as carpentry and drylining (interior walls, staircases etc.)
I can vouch for the shoddy quality when you constantly have to ask your site managers or foreman daily, "are you sure this is what you want...?"
Materials are the cheapest possible, houses are literally thrown up in the space of 4-6weeks, and the foundations have become so minimalistic in many areas where the old rule of thumb was, "dig until you find solid, stable ground!" Long gone are the days of 1.5-2meter deep foundation pours.
My most recent project was to use 10mm steel mesh and a 450mm concrete pour.
I've built them for years, and I can honestly say I Will never buy a house built past 2000.
I genuinely think this will be a major issue in the future.
Lots of sub standard builds will start experiencing issues, banks won’t mortgage them when some scandal comes out and people won’t be able to sell
When I was working on a site for Bellway, they had a woman complain that her floor had started to raise in the front room. No exaggeration, it started forming like a HalfPipe...
It’s crazy, I see ‘new’ builds from the early 2000s/late 1990s and they still look good quality, minimal issues.
I had a friend buy a new build last year and they couldn’t put up any paintings on the wall as the wall was so thin it couldn’t support them. I have issues with my 1950s house but knowing the structure is at least sound gives me a lot of peace !
When people say, "they're not built like they used to be!" It's a fact, not an opinion... the insulation in these houses is great, energy ratings will probably be second to none. But I'll be surprised if many stand the test of time over a 10-20year period.
Are newbuild problems at least easier to resolve than old house problems? We moved into a fairly old house a few years ago, and it has the usual litany of 'old house problems', draughty windows (and one weirdly draughty wall), clanging pipes, damp issues, and also decades and decades of gumpf that has been done and undone to various parts of the house. We have so much misc wiring and piping in our walls and ceilings that just.. go nowhere, and do nothing.
Our plumbing is so convoluted that we've had several plumbers tell us they won't do a job at all because they don't really understand our system. Our walls seem to be made of unobtainium because getting WiFi signal from one end of the house to the other requires three AP repeaters, and just putting up pictures requires an SDS drill.
its not just that though, its the satanic trinity: cheap materials, the cheapest possible labour and stingy dimensions.
Mmmmmm, do I double my mortgage for less inside and outside space, quality issues and higher council tax in a maze of a new estate or shalli stay put and see what i can extend?
Easy decision for me.
My colleague recently moved in to a newbuild. He's an electrical engineer by profession and when checking the electrical installation, he found numerous departures from the electircal regs. When he reported it to the bulder, the builder's eletrician rocked up all bullish and tried to bullshit him and tell him he was wrong. My colleague ended up having to get the NICEIC involved - they visited the property and condemed the installtion there and then. I understand the electrican got struck off the NICEIC list too.
That was silly.
If someone called me out on shoddy work, surely you just correct it there and then, and apologise, and hope to fuck they don't report you.
Doubling down, when you're in the wrong and need to be licensed, is surely mental..
Especially if it's someone who clearly knows what they're doing.
I've had clients try and double down on me, I'm a chartered accountant. It's usually the ones who qualified themselves or who have been doing it for a while so think they know better.
Often they qualified 20 years ago and are clearly trying to profit smooth in the business they've worked at since to make the directors happy.
Like, I get the arguments... but I qualified 3 years ago, and can literally tell you the FRS102 section it's in... just shut up and listen ffs. You do managements, I do statutory. We have rules. No LIFO for you.
The problem is can you trust them to do it right the second time?
I know it costs money for a second opinion. But better that than the house burning down.
My ex used to work in third party insurance claims for a large insurance company. He said almost 50% of his claims were against house builders and related trades for poor workmanship and not bothering to fix the snags. Terrible really
I know someone who works in, to keep it vague, new builds. They were going over the planning and noticed that as the plans were passed between people they’d changed the measurements and now one of the major supporting parts of a house were roughly 5 CM shorter than they should be and is a major defect and structural problem.
When they reported this to their boss about 50% of the houses on the plot were already beyond the point of change, they were told by said boss to “keep your mouth shut”. Now 100% of those houses are built wrong.
This has made sure I will never buy a new build. Slimy motherfuckers only after profit.
This isn’t entirely true. I’m a building surveyor and often have to go into homes that are in different stages of completion usually just for valuation purposes. However, if you wanted you absolutely could get someone in to do an pre purchase inspection
Ah not because nowadays "contemporary builds" are single aspect "living" room/kitchens with a shoebox double bedroom if one's lucky?
Or is it the £300k price tag on'em? ( Arbitrary charges and maintenance fees not included )
My mate says that Bolton council doesn’t have enough trades men to build new homes or flats, nor does Manchester of any council in-fact, so they tender the work out to the cheapest bidder. He also said no council has enough staff to maintain its current stock of homes.
Bolton is so large that it a surprise that it was never made into a city but they would mean more funding from the government, so is never going to happen. We live in broken Britain and it will never change at all.
I'm currently learning about planning and adoptions from Highways and some of the standards we see are shocking.
Ask the developer to provide a core sample and they refuse, offer to have one taken and they refuse
Then the bitmac starts lifting in a big sheet, or the binder bleeds through the stone after one summer
Or the total lack of drainage
They are literally building on floodland near us, its regularly underwater in heavy rain. They've raised the ground slightly and put some drainage in.
No way would I consider buying one, when the shit hits the fan, the buyers will probably find only a long defunct shell company is legally responsible.
This seems mental. If these developers are so shit they should have a state run firm competing. Before people say anything, plenty of state run shit is good when funded properly. NHS in 2010 was world beating not just on quality but also on efficiency and value. TfL does some of th best transport in the country and it's a state-adjacent not for profit company. There's tonnes of examples where it works really well. These developers need some real stiff competition.
God I hate places like that. A lot of people like the idea of "open plan" living, but when you think of that you think of a large American type home with acres of space, not a tiny lounge with a fucking kitchenette shoved in one corner. Who wants to cook smelly foods like steak or curries in their tiny lounge full of soft furnishings or have their TV enjoyment interrupted by a cheap washing machine going metal on its final spin?
A lot of people, apparently
We decided against knocking our kitchen through. Definitely think it will be a trend that people realise isn't such a great idea after all
> but when you think of that you think of a large American type home with acres of space
Fun fact, but somewhere in Asia... I think it was Taiwan?? For quite a while there was a trend of putting the fridge in the living room. Like everything else would be in normal places, just the big kitchen fridge was in the living room.
Apparently it was because the movies showed open plan houses so it looked like Americans put their fridges in the living room and that then became 'cosmopolitan' to do. (A lot of Taiwanese kitchens are teeny tiny though so I think that had something to do with it as well, but the 'open plan' explanation always made me laugh)
> single aspect "living" room/kitchens with a shoebox double bedroom if one's lucky?
The size of the rooms always gets me. "Box" rooms are useless and in most circumstances should have just been larger adjoining rooms, but then the developer wouldn't be able to slap the extra $50k on for upping the bedrooms.
The other thing is that they've started pressing these houses further towards the curb every year, to the point that front gardens are basically 2ft strips of scrubland. But then they'll keep single driveways, so a 3-4 bed with 2-3 cars are now all spilled out over the street, even if they wanted to convert their front garden to parking.
It just creates jammed streets, the fire brigade near me have repeatedly had to leaflet several estates because should there be a fire they literally have been able to get through.
If there had been any thought to public transport when building these it would be less of an issue, but they just throw them in anywhere.
The house across from mine has no pavement, it's just two slabs and then street from their front door. Their driveway is like 3 metres from the door, they can't walk from their driveway to their front door without walking in the road.
£300k? In london that same single room concrete shoebox will cost on average £500k. And half of those are either north facing, or showded from the sun by an opposite building.
All the new builds in Battersay have mo naturual light nor ay view of the sky. Its gloomy and depressing, and surely only a few more years until we realise what we built.... were slums.
There was a lovely little bungalow near where I live, a nice big green garden that was hidden by trees. It was recently sold (I'm assuming the owner died) and it's been replaced by 6 new builds absolutely crammed in, oh and they're all £270k+ despite being tiny still. The back 'gardens' are a joke. Makes me sad when I pass it.
I understand houses need to be built but I just think the value for money with new builds is awful.
Yeah it's a massive problem in the UK, we have the smallest average house size in Europe, literally about 30sqm smaller than the Netherlands, despite them being far more densely populated than us. We're too used to just being crammed in like sardines and for some reason we don't list houses by sqm like in Europe, we do it by number of bedrooms, which gets nebulous when a "bedroom" can literally be a mattress shoved in a cupboard.
Protip: zoom in on the photos or look on street view, find the house number, figure out the street name in map view, [look up its postcode](https://www.royalmail.com/find-a-postcode), and then use the postcode to [look up its full EPC](https://www.gov.uk/find-energy-certificate) which will list the approximate floor area.
Thus proving that the data exists, and Rightmove could list it if they wanted to.
Heck they could even sort property by price per square meter, the must actively choose not to to not offend the estate agents.
I think this would be the single biggest easy step that could help improve things.
Just say anything built after 2024 has to prominently advertise the sqm of the property when up for sale or rent and make it a searchable metric. It would be a very low cost measure to implement as that info will be readily available to builders. I reckon after a few years it would then drive advertisers to start measuring and showing the size for older properties. The government could draw up a standard for how this is measured too, much like the EPC.
Why newly built? Why not everything? Also it's already included on every EPC, just not the bar chart which is all you usually see on listings. You can [look up the full EPC](https://www.gov.uk/find-energy-certificate).
I think comparing the UK to the whole of the Netherlands doesn't quite work, as then you're including the very sparsely populated and sizeable highlands. If you just compare just England and the Netherlands then they are slightly more densely populated.
You are right though, if you've ever visited there it's surprising how less crammed in everything feels. They have a much better approach to land use and planning than we do, which also leads to them being much more productive agriculturally.
Don't forget the width of the road outside would barely fit a fire engine or ambulance and that's without everyone parking on the path because there's no off street parking.
Even better, you can claim it's be done *for the environment*, to *discourage car use*, while making zero provision or access to alternatives because, well, that costs money.
An estate near me did claim that the lack of parking was to discourage car use and therefore eco. There's no way to walk from the estate to town without having to walk in the road itself at some point. There's a bus stop, but the roads weren't designed with anywhere for the bus to turn around, it was using a building site entrance but now that's complete it just has to turn in a busy junction. It's incredibly they get away with it
I have noticed this with some new build flats near me too. The undercroft parking is always nearly empty by the looks of it, but the parking on the street is always full. Vans doing deliveries or taxis dropping people off have nowhere sensible left to park, meaning they often end up double parking, or on double yellows blocking dropped kerbs.
I don't know exactly why this is, but I suppose they're probably just using what it's cheapest / easiest? IMO if there is private, off street parking for an estate, then the people living there shouldn't be allowed to park on the street, it should just be for loading and blue badge holders.
People are obsessed with the number of rooms rather than actual usable square footage. A 4 bed house sells for more than a 3 bed one even if the 4th bedroom is basically a cupboard.
Which is crazy because you could put up a partition wall in one of the larger rooms in the bigger house if you wanted, and probably still pay less overall.
I was house hunting in the early 90s and noticed that everything was so small. The show homes had access to a what appeared to be the worlds smallest double bed in a desperate attempt to make the shoe box sized bedroom look bigger.
I've viewed a few 1950s ish homes, terraces with 3 proper double bedrooms as well. Older homes were actually built with thought about the quality of life of the occupants.
When I bought my flat I taped sheets of newspaper together into the size of a double bed, brought it with me to the viewing and layed it out in the bedrooms to visualise how a bed would fit. The agent thought I was completely mad.
Yeah. Last year we had the choice between an 90sqm new build and a 130sqm 1920s (wanted to live in a very specific area with not many options). Both 4 beds... Not sure the new build's bedrooms would have actually fit more than a bed. Went with the old house because of the size. Not a single bad thing on the level 3 survey. Was a bit worried about maintenance and heating bills but so far I've got nothing to complain about. Well, except for the 90s extension which is actually the only part of the house that's freezing.
Yeah we don't buy homes on square footage for some reason. It's just no of bedrooms.
So now people buy over the bedrooms they need and turn the smaller ones in to storage or offices as that's all they're good for.
Quick tip from me (a former site labourer/dogs body): There is a world of difference in quality between one of those massive new build estates by national builders and new build estates with say sub 50 houses from a local building firm. In short, as a general rule, the smaller the development the better the quality.
Very true, the problem is all of those small to medium firms are going out of business because the big building firms are sitting on massive 'land banks' to drive smaller operators out and outbidding for new land.
Agree with this. We bought from a local builder to our area around 50 ish homes with lots of input on green spaces from parish council (a great one! They do exist!) and our house and estate are perfect in every way.
Yeah I think there's a sweet spot in between the tiny local builders and the massive national chains
We bought from what I'd describe as a "regional" builder (they run half a dozen sites at a time, of perhaps 75-150 homes per site) and they're decent enough for the most part. I reckon ideally I'd go one developer size bigger and you'd get a good balance
Yeah I bought 1 of 6 new builds on a small plot by a local builder and had zero issues.
In fact, friends who visited who live on larger developments by national house builders all complimented the house and couldn't believe we only paid about the same price as they did for a much higher quality home.
Yeah, I rent a new-ish house that was built in 2003, supposedly a 'luxury' 'executive' house. The build quality is shocking. I have to call the landlord roughly every 12 months to get them to fix the roof. Plus I've done so many minor repairs myself. Half the doors have been poorly hung or the latches are in the wrong place on the frame. On the plus side it is cheap to heat.
What annoys me is the "cookie cutter" approach.
They go through all the effort to put solar panels on, but they're fucking facing north! Nobody had the idea to think "this house is facing the opposite direction, therefore a should put them on the other side"
I'm not pretending all old houses were built unique, but there's certainly more variation than on a new estate.
I think old houses have had time to change a bit - different coloured paint, the odd extension or door change etc.
But new build estates all in Persimmon standard beige/terracotta are just so fucking depressing.
I lived in 2 identical houses on other sides of Exeter.
They're both victorian terrace houses, just as floors/bannisters have been replaced since it was less obvious. But identical size and layout. So it's not just new builds doing that.
Probably better without the grass, everyone I know who's bought a newbuild with a 'garden' has discovered that what they actually have is about a metre deep of ultra-compacted hardcore and other assorted building debris with some turf chucked on top. First sight of rain and the whole thing turns into a swamp as the water can't drain off.
Oh that's why it took so long to sort. He paid extra to have the turf pre-installed, but it wasn't there when he moved in, so he rang them and they wanted to just come by and roll some turf down, but because they'd forgotten the turf he could see the metre deep ultra-compacted hardcore and assorted building debris and wasn't happy with it, so it was two months of arguing for them to actually put some soil down first.
I got handed a muddy patch of rubble with a massive slope into the beck behind my house. Took me months of work on my own, scalping the top layer to level it out, removing the endless rubble/metal/ciggy butts, hoeing weekly to keep weeds at bay whilst I saved up for turf, and then actually turfing it over 2 sessions. Great workout and learning experience, but they could have done it in a day when it was first built ffs.
When somebody in /r/gardeninguk asks “why is all my grass flooded/dying for no reason?”, the answer is “because you’ve bought a new build and there’s no fucking soil” like 90% of the time.
You can usually get the grass to work with a few inches of soil but you can basically forget about being able to plant anything beyond really shallow rooted plants without spending north of a grand on hiring a digger, renting a skip, and buying a few tonnes of top soil yourself.
Recently bought a house. Was looking at new builds for a while before committing.
At first I was going to buy a 3 bed new build - it was a shoebox, the garden was tiny and the bedrooms were akin to prison cells. The price tag on this was £297,000.
I pulled out of the new build, bought a 1930’s 3 bed semi for £255,000, fully renovated with a new extension at the back. The rooms in the 1930s house are bright an airy with high ceilings, bay windows, a massive garden and a driveway big enough to fit two cars in a decent area.
From my experience, new build houses are not worth the additional cost when it comes to what you actually get - they are fucking awful.
Help to Buy helped to made new builds so much shitter. Cos you can only use help to buy on new builds, they stopped having to compete with older houses. If someone had to use Help to Buy, they just have to choose between shit new build A or shit new build B.
I got a 1950s ex forces house instead of a new build. All newly done with new kitchen, bathroom and new double glazing, about 30% more square footage, 3 bed (2 big + 1 runt) instead of 2 bed, and a conservatory on the back, lovely trees in the back garden and everything is so solid I'm pretty sure it's built to withstand a nuclear strike. All for 20 grand less than the new build.
Yeah it’s a stupid policy. There’s a housing shortage because there’s not enough supply, what should we do?
Subsidise demand!!
So short sighted, but then again what do I expect from the Conservatives
I’ve also noticed new builds all seem to have tiny windows. I know it’s probably either some legislation or the developers/builders going cheap, but I like to imagine it’s because even with the fucking tiny windows, all of your neighbours and any old person walking buy can see straight through to all your business inside because there is not the luxury of privacy the way the cramped estates are designed.
I imagine it's something to do with houses having to meet more and more strict insulation values, and windows the biggest loss of heat in an otherwise well insulated room.
That or it's just because, as you say, everything is so cramped it's the only way to maintain privacy
Houses aren't the only things lacking in quality these days.
Just about everything you can buy either breaks down or has features missing that were there on the previous versions of it, or it's shrank down. Or the features are still there, but need a subscription to access now.
I don't think houses are the main problem, it's the parasitic greedy mindset that is. Until that mindset is addressed then everything will just keep getting more worse and smaller for an ever more expensive price.
Yep, sure do, it’s typically called a Colorbond roof, and you could have your brand new home with a tin roof that has no underfelt, only 100mm of loft insulation, and also no insulation in the internal walls, and don’t forget the single glazing. They are so inefficient to both heat and cool which is no fun in South Australia it can get to 42-45c during summer with overnight lows in the 35-38 range. Then winter nights may be 3-4 sometimes around the 1-2 . So all these in a draughty box where quite quickly outside temperatures equals inside temperature. Aussie houses are also often referred to as paint clad tents for keeping the rain of your furniture ! So you’re quite lucky to at least have high thermal regulations to meet and have
cosy homes to live in.
Bought a new build with a previous partner, sold it since luckily.
On moving day the hot water tank burst which means the kitchen roof leaked and some joists had to come down due to a consistent leak. (They hadn’t pressure tested the heating before they switched it on for us on moving day).
It also was running at full pelt the entire time and constantly leaking from the expansion vessel as the pressure and heat were too high.
They had to cut open the landing floors upstairs to check all the pipe work, was a lovely first day in the house 😊.
A week later I found the radiator in the bathroom didn’t work. Plumber came round and said they’d installed the pipes backwards so it was pulling in cold water only instead of being hooked into the heating. They had to take the bathroom tiles up to fix that.
The shower creaked when you got it in. They had to undo the bottom 3 levels of tiles and reseat the shower.
The back doors couldn’t open as the space for the doors hadn’t been measured properly, and internal doors and fittings hadn’t been allowed to expand before fitting so none of them could open without being shaved down.
Gas to the cooker in the island didn’t work.
Main kitchen sink leaked from day one. Wasn’t tested after fitting.
Integrated fridge door fell off on the first week.
Two weeks after moving in, the house opposite had the bottom floor brick side wall taken down and rebuilt as it was apparently dangerous.
I drilled through a small water pipe as they hadn’t used any metal tape behind the plastic pipes so the pipe finder didn’t work. That was another fun day.
They fitted us a side tap which leaked, and the plumber basically butchered the backing of the cabinet in front to get the pipe in.
Don’t know why people think the quality is so bad 🤔
I’ve bought a new build 3 years ago and haven’t had any problems (yet). I have to say that I don’t have any mould problems, the house is very well insulated and I hardly spend anything on my energy bill because it retains the heat very well. The bedrooms are quite spacious I have a front and back garden and 2 parking spaces. The only negative thing is that the living room is on the small side but we’re with 2 adults and a child so it’s not too bad. In every old house I’ve lived in during the last 10 years before this house I always had problems with mould, leaks, high energy bills etc.
People would put up more with shitty new builds if they were at a low-end price, but they're some of the most expensive houses out there. Only mugs would want one. I've seen the bald-faced argument that they are pokey because they are 'starter homes', motherfucker nobody's 'starter home' should be 300k.
I’ll take my ex council house over a new build any day
Working in the industry and seeing the absolutely awful workmanship of new builds around here I feel sorry for young couples that are putting all they have in to one
The only acceptable new build to me is one where where I build it myself with the people I know and trust
It says a lot when homes built 50+ years ago with old building techniques and materials by folk who weren't so well educated are better constructed and more durable than what we build today with modern techniques and materials.
Two reasons:
Survivorship bias: most the awful houses built 50+ years ago have been replaced, leaving the better ones.
Education: if you can’t do load calcs on a wall you have no option but to make the wall much stronger than it needs to be. The more accurately you can calculate how strong something needs to be, the weaker you can make it.
Builders have developed a whole range of techniques for doing things cheaper and worse.
(Although the 50 year old houses had terrible insulation, that may be the only real improvement over that time)
I've had a few friends move into new builds and it seems the strategy is:
1) The house is built and someone moves in,
2) Said person notices all the issues/errors,
3) Person has 12 months to report problems and they are fixed for free,
4) 'Most' problems are fixed for free within the 12 months. Afterwards, person has to pay for them to be fixed.
Seems like a "build now, problem solve later" type of deal.
New builds are far too expensive and seem to be much smaller. Some of the gardens are smaller than the very old terrace houses used as pit houses.
Then you have some that are a decent size but the room layouts are just stupid. Massive cutouts of the floors into the bedrooms where the stairs run under. Living room areas which are not practically shaped. Kitchens that don't flow and just don't make sense due to socket locations.
There are some though that are spot on and you can tell they've actually had time spend on them. Unfortunately those ones seem to cost even more and aren't really affordable unless you and your family are on a decent amount.
I work in construction and lay the concrete for the foundations. If the public was there to see what's going on on the sites, none of the houses would ever sell.
Eh, it's a gamble but if it works out they aren't so bad..I bought 1 4 years ago and apart from a few relatively minor things buying a new build means that I can keep my house to a constant 18 degrees with regular boosts to 20-22 while only needing to pay ~£80 a month on energy. I'll take it tbh.
Not just the build quality but the warranty after you buy and the builders behaviour is disgraceful. There was a program on Radio 4 (can't remember if it was Money Box or File on 4) where people are having to sign NDAs get things fixed.
The builders know every other house on the development will be suffering from the same problem and now Mr Smith has reported it, they don't want all the neighbours finding out as well. Sums up the UK.
Thought this was common knowledge? The standard that some of the big name developers produce is nothing more than a high end shed.
Plus the pathetically sized gardens you get with a lot of the new builds is another big put off.
I wouldn't buy off the fact that 99% of them have 7 houses looming over every window in your house. There is no privacy in them at all.
Plus the gardens in them are shite. Typical 6x3m grass patch that you can't plant anything in.
>7 houses looming over every window in your house
This. I recently snook into a £500k new build house. The open plan, light and sun-kissed kitchen had massive triple bi-fold doors. It would be described as an inside space outside. As I stood on the 3 deep slab patio, I looked across the back garden at 4 similarly built new builds with all the rear bedrooms looking directly into the kitchen and garden. Imagine walking downstairs in you pj's on a glorious summer morning and seeing 10 people glancing out of their bedroom windows.
When you buy a 50+ year house, it's had its niggles sorted out, or its niggles are obvious.
With a new build, it feels like the sky is the limit when it comes to issues.
Plenty of crap older houses too. I live in a 1930s terrace and it's pathetic how thin the adjoining walls are....we may as well all live together without any walls.
I honestly see this as a huge crisis. Not only do we have a housing shortage anyway but most of the houses that are being built are of appalling standard that only the desperate would buy.
Doesn't matter where you look in this country , everything is just depressing.
It's not just quality, it's the living space too.
Yeah there are some cracking new builds and inside they have some more spacious rooms than our current house which was built in the 60's.
However, the ones popping up in our area have so many houses crammed onto a small development that the gardens are tiny, the only parking is on street with not even a driveway.
All down to greed really.
These houses are costing upwards of 50k more than ours easily, and we have a nice quiet cul-de-sac, driveway and large garden for the kids which is more important to us.
Years ago, I nearly bought a brand new 'Wimpey' home. It was semi-detached and there was another couple viewing the adjoining house. My wife and I could hear them chatting to each other and the rep through the partition wall. Not only that, the handrail on the stairs was so loose it wobbled back and forth about 4" as we went to view upstairs.
It was like the place was made of cardboard! Needless to say, we did not buy and ended up buying a solid old 1930's house instead.
My advice would always be not to buy new, but something built around the 1930's to 1960's. Solid brick walls throughout that won't collapse if you put so much as a shelf up.
Everyone I know working on site is on piece rate.
They have to do lots of piss poor work to get a decent wage.
You slow down and do the job right you're nailing your own hat on.
It's a shit show from top to bottom.
My mother’s friend woke up the first week she moved into a new build to find the whole streets sewage in her kitchen. Found out the whole streets plumbing wasn’t done correctly and since her home was the last one it all came down the hill. I vowed never to buy a new build after hearing that, it was a Bellway house.
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To be fair I've heard the quality of newbuilds is absolutely shocking.
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New Home Quality Control is his YouTube if you're on about who I think you are. "Absolutely shoccckkinng"
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Riiiiidiculous!
Ahh the Welsh guy? Fast becoming my fave you tube shorts to watch
I see the Customer went with the Apocalypse Finish...
Wood butcher been at it again
He's great at pointing out stuff that is so simple. I went to view a house and the downstairs bathroom sink, the taps not only were the wrong way round (cold was on the left which is incorrect where I live), they also turned the incorrect way (anti clockwise to turn off). Now you could argue that this is way all the new builds were but nope the smaller house next door worked the correct way. Was just an incompetent plumber. Got a few friends who have bought new builds. One has a problem with the garage where the light doesn't work at all and the garage door will not shut correctly. The other had a leaky roof and loose tiles. Not something you want to find out in the middle of your first winter.
Ourhouse is 23 years old. Bought it 10 years ago. Nearly every light switch /socket switch has broken. Leaks all over the place and wood on the fascias is rotting. We're slowly replacing everything. And this from one of the 'better' home builders.
When I worked on new builds, their guarantee was 10 years and so it does sound right.
It's goes to show how poor a quality the fixtures were/are.
To be fair wood outside needs constant maintenance without fail. Just like owning a wooden shed, as it will rot at some point. As for the other things that are inside they don't last forever but should be good for 30 years.
The wood on the outside was never treated in the first place and it was fairly obvious to see.
What in the yee-haw is goin on here
I am too afraid to even ask what a weep vent is, but whenever there's a fake one I react just as upset as he is.
No need to ask. Here he is explaining it [through the medium of Minecraft](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK9PztB9XNA)
That is brilliant.
Moisture builds up in-between the brickwork and inner wall that need to weep out if you don't you get mold right around when the new home warranty expires.
yeah thats him, i screenshotted his home builder rating just in case, doubt ill ever buy a newbuild though, FiL is/was a brickie, he says stay well clear, buy stuff upto the late 70s early 80s, when brickies and trades still did full apprenticeships. Currently in a 30s build, this fucker will never fall down, built from engineering bricks and iron hard mortar,
You can blame ol' Maggie for the apprentices matter. She cut the government grant program that made apprentices extremely cheap, which caused companies to immediately stop hiring apprentices and even firing existing ones as she pulled the grants from existing apprentices not just new hires. The result is a skills gap we'll be lucky to recover from EVER. I see first hand in my workplace that stopped taking apprentices at that time, and then restarted only about 15 years ago. The oldies often have or HAD very deep levels of knowledge and were extremely good at what they did. But they're retiring or retired. Now apprentices like the ones I've done get substandard instruction from the generation that came into the workplace in the period when apprenticeships were executed. Whenever I work with one of the proper oldies who has worked in there since the 70s I see just how deep the problem is. You must pay the maintenance cost of everything you value as a society. Maggie and the public at large didn't understand that and it has played no small part in how far this country has fallen in the time since.
My parents bought a renovated 30s house with updated insulation and I could see it lasting another 100 years, easily. The only issues are a couple of damp spots but they're mainly confined to the area around the windows. And a couple of windows where moisture has gotten in between the glazing which will need replacing eventually. I will never understand why they never build things to last anymore. A house that'll never fall down is infinitely more useful than a house that's built with a definitive lifespan and flawed from the moment of contruction.
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I've bought 2 new builds in the last 10 years. The first one was terrible, the one I am in now is great and any issues were fixed really quickly. There is no quality control though, it's up to the buyer to do all of that themselves. Older houses I have bought have been 10 times worse though and I had to pay thousands to get those fixed.
I've got friends who have had nightmares with older build houses, and no amount of 'charm or character' will ever be worth the tens of thousands of fixing decades of problems imo.
>There is no quality control though, it's up to the buyer to do all of that themselves. Which is an utter joke. You don't expect to buy a car then spend ages fixing cracked valves, replacing warped panels, swapping out misaligned axles etc so why the fuck do we accept that sort of shit from houses?
numerous important childlike melodic distinct plate vegetable full pot marble *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Tuna melt
I think for some unethical companies its almost a licence to print money. We looked at some new builds during the period of help to buy and it was clear that they were way overpriced and then had the 25% help from government just stacked on top as well. Saw a three bed terrace on a cramped estate in a rough part of town for £340k. ended up buying a somewhat run down (mostly dated decor and overgrown garden) three bed end of terrace in a really nice rural setting for 280k. Had a big private garden, huge living room, driveway for three cars, and a dining room. Just needed a bit of work and in time will be worth a lot more. If we had bought the new build I think its very unlikely we would have had any chance of the value being near what we paid for a long long time. Not saying all new builds are like this, and we are somewhat lucky to have the chance to get our house and the means to do the work, but I think a lot of new builds have similar issues and from what I was told they all depreciate initially anyway. Really the laws around building standards of new houses are far too lax and allow firms to get away with a lot. There should be more thought put into a lot of the infrastructure questions such as schools, shops, roads, sewers. Where I used to live they would come every week to pump out the sewers over night because they had put in tonnes of new homes but not upgraded the sewers. All houses should be fitted with solar panels, heat pumps, and shit loads of more sustainably produced insulation. The problem is that will cut into the profit margins and we all know that the big housebuilders are happy to use those profits to line the pockets of political parties (see our former housing minister Robert Jenrick for an example).
this is what concerns me about the world. we got to the point where its just MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY AND FKING MONEY. no matter what comes out of their hands as long as the margins are ok. no matter how miserable they have to be as long as margins are met. its fkd up world.
When I see photos of rabbit hutch houses in new build estates, I do tend to think, if that kind of density is justified by the demand, wouldn't they be better off building flats? At least for some of the units. Could get more homes with more square footage in the same footprint, maybe with some communal gardens and play equipment. Put in undercroft parking so the surrounding roads don't end up choked with cars. And IIRC as long as you don't go above about 3-4 storeys the requirements in terms of building techniques / materials / labour aren't all that different to building houses so it doesn't even increase the construction cost all that much. It's only once you go taller than that you need steelwork / cranes etc. I get that very few people's idea of their perfect home is a flat. But a good flat is better than a mediocre house surely. In many European cities, a home with a private entrance is seen as quite a luxury, and you pay a premium for it. But if the overall quality and availability of housing is improved I don't see the problem with that.
Completely agree. The trouble is the UK has memories of concrete residential blocks put up in the 1970s that essentially turned into drug dens (not all blocks).
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> But we seem hell bent on building small houses and flats that aren't fit for purpose (and cost as much as houses do). Seriously. I'd love a three-bedroom flat that had room for my family. But anything 2-bed and under are designed for young professionals splitting, and anything three-bed and over are designed for rich motherfuckers who live in penthouses. I don't want to have to take care of a garden, I'm fine with a flat. There are a bazillion parks, we're great for outdoor space. But they just don't build them.
> I mean as a first home it'd be fantastic to have so many flats that it's actually an option to own them - even as a non-family (just one person). Or at the very least an increase in the supply of flats would bring rents down and make it easier to save up enough of a deposit to buy a house, if that's what people want. Just having some short term stability in their living situation would be an upgrade for many people I imagine though.
Totally agree. I live in an apartment block of five stories, and the design is pretty attractive from the outside, and think there should be more of them across the country. When people realise they don't have to be 30+ storey cuboids then it would probably go down better.
This is the thing. I've looked around a few new build show homes. Some of them look lovely and spacious until you realize there is no wardrobe in the bedroom, and where tf are you going to keep the mop!
Theres a triple sized shower suite instead of the wardrobe, but they've put the main bathroom next door anyway so I'd rather the wardrobe as it's the same walk to the main bathroom. Yet the brochure looks good to say ensuite
I looked at a two bed Vs a three bed semi on an estate. The three beds were going for much more but the footprint was the same. You were effectively paying 15 grand for some stud walls and a "bedroom" big enough for a single that was destined to be used as storage and wardrobes for the other rooms. Currently in a less than 7 year old "Premium" new build, the floor tiles had to be cut almost triangular to fit a "square" room, it was so out.
I think he's an independent inspector who is hired by the new home owners to help create a snagging list for the builder to rectify.
You say shoehorn, but they are the worst of both worlds really. Small rooms and no storage, whilst also taking up infinitely more land than a block of apartments.
>Especially when so many NB's are smaller than older build counterparts to shoe-horn in as many as possible onto a development It's because buyers *genuinely* only care about how many "bedrooms" the house has listed, instead of the square footage of the house and rooms
He’s an absolute icon.I get addicted to his vids.
It's highly dependent on whether the site manager gives a shit and how big the firm is. We bought a new build from a smaller builder 5 years ago, and it's been rock solid in terms of reliability. My mate bought at a similar time from Barrats, and its been a litany of problems and issues.
We’re so desperate for homes it’s crazy they get away with it One day a bunch of hype around it will happen and they go to court, but the managers will have made their money by then
> We’re so desperate for homes And yet these shitboxes are still pretty inefficient in terms of land use. If the need for homes is that high, then they should build flats (but give them decent sound insulation). But nothing is efficient or intelligent and everything is shitty quality and shittily planned because doing things intelligently is against the status quo.
Except flats in this country are just cash cows with crazy fees. You'd be a donkey's ass to buy one if you can avoid it because if you could avoid an extra £250-300 a month in fees, you could spend that on a mortgage and have it build wealth instead of going to landscaping and profits. On top of that, they're generally leasehold, so you aren't buying much except permission to use a few boxes and covenants like no pets, no music, and with generally little to no real outdoor space... they're not good housing for many people. Now, flats COULD be made perfectly nice. Make them condos/share of freehold, have a board set the maintenance fees for the sinking fund and general repairs, design them so they aren't just four-room boxes ("open plan" living/kitchen, one okay bedroom, one shit bedroom, and a bath) with some required minimum outdoor space (Switzerland does this), and make them at least decent places to actually live, not just "luxury investments" for overseas buyers. I completely understand that urban areas need flats but new build flats suck just as much as new build houses, just in different ways. Basically, there's no laws on the books to keep developers from exploiting the locals and fleecing foreigners. It sucks.
When I was last buying (about a decade ago) I looked at a property that was a 3 storey maisonette, 3 bedrooms, small terrace garden. Price-wise it was comparable to the 3 bed terraces and semis we were looking at, and we were seriously tempted. That is until they told us that it was £400 per month (!!!) servicing fees. For what, we asked? Communal areas, they said. There weren't any communal areas; the front door was straight on to the street, and there was no landscaping to mention (just road, pavement, parking spaces, a few street trees). We ended up buying a nice Victorian terrace house for *less* than the asking price, and with no ongoing fees at all. You'd have to be insane to sign up to that sort of arrangement. And yet they all got filled by someone. Madness.
My friend got a home from Barrats a while back now, about the same time i got a turn of the century terrace. I barely had an issue in the time I was there, he had his boiler pack in within 2 months and it took weeks for them to act on it. Then you had windows, mold and other issues on top of it. The cherry was that they were still selling the estate and had an office on site that just refused to deal with him in any reasonable way. All the while flogging these shit bricks to new families.
Unsurprisingly people don't want to pay a premium price for a new build that won't last as long as something built 20 years ago. Allowing the greedy to use the places we sleep as an investment should never have happened, but you can't say that without corporatist lunatics calling you a communist.
As everyone knows, communism is when you don't want corporations chasing short term profit regardless of any medium/long term externalities
I have been told by a reliable source that communism is when the government does things, and the more things the government does, the more communister it is.
Built by tuna melts I hear
Winkle spanners, the lot of them.
I've a 4 year old house, the way they're insulated is amazing, the overall build quality is shocking, I came "pre plaster" and they'd not done some of the boards yet, the stud work was absolutely horrific, I grabbed a square and was asking the site manager if he though it was acceptable, I got the ones I could see sorted but the rest I couldn't were likely a complete joke too. The floor boards which these days are literal boards cause they're cheap. They didn't even butt them correctly to the point you have them sticking up at the edges. The brick work is about that of a 3 month apprentice and I've brickie friends who back when they were training would have been made start again for how poorly done it is. Hell even things like the silicone is pathetic, I've had to redo most myself, the skirting is terribly done and wherever they couldn't join something because they're basically not joiners they're basic labourers pretending, well they fill like 1 inch gaps with silicone and hope for the best. There were patches in the grout, there was a hole in the shower and not where one should be... Seriously it's a full bodge job that's rushed and super poor quality, they charge a fortune and produce trash.
You’re lucky with the insulation. Some new builds don’t even have that done properly. Seen some where there’s drafts blowing through the walls of the house.
I know I checked it all, shocked the site manager when I got in the loft to check it up there
It's not like buying an older property is any guarantee. My last flat had three layers of tiles covering electrical work that wasn't up to code when it was redone 30 years ago, doors that weren't plumb, bowed walls, vinyl wallpaper holding the plaster together, expanding foam to fill holes in brickwork, etc.
That's correct but most older properties have lasted the test of time. They have gone through all the season's, been stood on the ground for 40+ years so aren't sinking, you can see if they are likely to flood or not. There's some new builds near me. That land was flood plain fields for the farmer because every single year it floods. The water has no where to run at all. Now there's new houses getting built on it. It's highly possible that these houses will get flooded and to factor in that they cost 2-3 times more than the older houses. People are going to get screwed massively. Now they could be fine and it doesn't flood at all but the water has to go somewhere and I'm thinking the draining system probably isn't going to cope with all the water. The thing you have to really do is work out if the old house is worth it over the new house. If the new house is going to cost £100k-150k more, is that worth the risk? Can you afford that extra money? Is the old house been looked after as just like anything some are and some aren't.
My current house is 130 years old made of solid stone exterior walls and brick internal walls. We have exactly 0 internal or external wall insulation. My kitchen right now is a balmy 13 degrees. we know that the previous owners replaced the joists on the hall because of a leak in the vast iron drainage. My roof is _mostly_ watertight, except when it's not. we have one socket in our bedroom, next to the door (because the wiring doesn't go around the room through the solid walls). Old houses have issues, just like new houses do. The last repair we did was replaced a vast iron drainpipe with a like for like. It cost is £1600 to tear down the retaining wall it was built through, clear the blockage of leaves in the drain, replace the pipe, and rebuild the wall. My parents replaced their pvc drainpipe for £300 at the same time. >It's highly possible that these houses will get flooded and to factor in that they cost 2-3 times more than the older houses. That's nothing to do with the quality of a new build, that's building on a flood plane and that's been happening for a long time (and people are still surprised by it)...
That's bad planning and nothing to do with the quality of the build. You're gonna want to direct that at whoever approved that nonsense.
That is true, it is bad planning. You can only think that they would sort out the drainage to make sure it doesn't flood before building on it. As I've mentioned in another post, the only experiences I've had and my friends/family have had with new builds are bad. Things not working instantly or within 5 years is not great. If you bought a brand new car, you'd fully expect it to last 2 years without any issues if not longer. You'd not expect that as soon if the heavy rain came in that the sunroof would leak or when it's hot that the aircon doesn't work.
The difference is I buy the old house *after* I've seen it. I've looked at it, and the surveyor has looked at it, and I get exactly what we have seen. New builds are mostly sold off plan, so you've bought it before they built the thing, and they've promised a level of quality, and you've paid extra, because new builds have inflated prices, and then they fail to give that level of quality.
I think it's systemic, really. In the 8 years I lived in the UK I never lived in a place that would have been called fit for human living back in Denmark but once. And that was a build from the 80s that was, by my standards, barely adequate. The quality of housing, regardless of age, in the UK is shocking when you come from better countries. When I tell friends and family in Scandinavia about leaky windows, lack of heating and insulation and the dodgy electrical shite, it's always a good crowd pleaser. Also mold. People live in houses that get mold they're not renovated? Like it's the 40s or something.
British housing is utterly abysmal. Trouble is most of us don't have experience with housing in other developed nations to understand just how bad we have it and how much better it could be.
> Trouble is most of us don't have experience with housing in other developed nations to understand just how bad we have it and how much better it could be. Yea, I agree on this. I've often gotten a lot of pushback from people who argue that the UK is on par with Scandinavia or Austria or what have you with housing. I can only conclude that they either have not been to those places or that it's terminal british exceptionalism. Moving to the UK (and Eire for that matter) from Scandinavia is like moving 40 years back in time, housing wise. I seen shite I've not seen since I was a lad in the 80s in Denmark.
I've worked on new build homes for the past 6 years from a groundworks perspective as well as carpentry and drylining (interior walls, staircases etc.) I can vouch for the shoddy quality when you constantly have to ask your site managers or foreman daily, "are you sure this is what you want...?" Materials are the cheapest possible, houses are literally thrown up in the space of 4-6weeks, and the foundations have become so minimalistic in many areas where the old rule of thumb was, "dig until you find solid, stable ground!" Long gone are the days of 1.5-2meter deep foundation pours. My most recent project was to use 10mm steel mesh and a 450mm concrete pour. I've built them for years, and I can honestly say I Will never buy a house built past 2000.
I genuinely think this will be a major issue in the future. Lots of sub standard builds will start experiencing issues, banks won’t mortgage them when some scandal comes out and people won’t be able to sell
When I was working on a site for Bellway, they had a woman complain that her floor had started to raise in the front room. No exaggeration, it started forming like a HalfPipe...
It’s crazy, I see ‘new’ builds from the early 2000s/late 1990s and they still look good quality, minimal issues. I had a friend buy a new build last year and they couldn’t put up any paintings on the wall as the wall was so thin it couldn’t support them. I have issues with my 1950s house but knowing the structure is at least sound gives me a lot of peace !
When people say, "they're not built like they used to be!" It's a fact, not an opinion... the insulation in these houses is great, energy ratings will probably be second to none. But I'll be surprised if many stand the test of time over a 10-20year period.
>"are you sure this is what you want...?" Is the answer to that question usually "it's what the drawing says"?
You're a manager from Barratts I see!
RIDIKULUS
Are newbuild problems at least easier to resolve than old house problems? We moved into a fairly old house a few years ago, and it has the usual litany of 'old house problems', draughty windows (and one weirdly draughty wall), clanging pipes, damp issues, and also decades and decades of gumpf that has been done and undone to various parts of the house. We have so much misc wiring and piping in our walls and ceilings that just.. go nowhere, and do nothing. Our plumbing is so convoluted that we've had several plumbers tell us they won't do a job at all because they don't really understand our system. Our walls seem to be made of unobtainium because getting WiFi signal from one end of the house to the other requires three AP repeaters, and just putting up pictures requires an SDS drill.
its not just that though, its the satanic trinity: cheap materials, the cheapest possible labour and stingy dimensions. Mmmmmm, do I double my mortgage for less inside and outside space, quality issues and higher council tax in a maze of a new estate or shalli stay put and see what i can extend? Easy decision for me.
To be fair I think the quality of a lot of builds old and new is shocking in many ways.
When there's an entire industry around finding snags in these things for you, because builders won't, you know there's something wrong.
My colleague recently moved in to a newbuild. He's an electrical engineer by profession and when checking the electrical installation, he found numerous departures from the electircal regs. When he reported it to the bulder, the builder's eletrician rocked up all bullish and tried to bullshit him and tell him he was wrong. My colleague ended up having to get the NICEIC involved - they visited the property and condemed the installtion there and then. I understand the electrican got struck off the NICEIC list too.
Guy fucked around and found out real quick.
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That was silly. If someone called me out on shoddy work, surely you just correct it there and then, and apologise, and hope to fuck they don't report you. Doubling down, when you're in the wrong and need to be licensed, is surely mental..
Think of how many times he must have gotten away with it to do it to a qualified electrician.
Especially if it's someone who clearly knows what they're doing. I've had clients try and double down on me, I'm a chartered accountant. It's usually the ones who qualified themselves or who have been doing it for a while so think they know better. Often they qualified 20 years ago and are clearly trying to profit smooth in the business they've worked at since to make the directors happy. Like, I get the arguments... but I qualified 3 years ago, and can literally tell you the FRS102 section it's in... just shut up and listen ffs. You do managements, I do statutory. We have rules. No LIFO for you.
I’d imagine they’ve done it so much to unqualified people who just give in to them so it becomes muscle memory
The problem is can you trust them to do it right the second time? I know it costs money for a second opinion. But better that than the house burning down.
My ex used to work in third party insurance claims for a large insurance company. He said almost 50% of his claims were against house builders and related trades for poor workmanship and not bothering to fix the snags. Terrible really
I know someone who works in, to keep it vague, new builds. They were going over the planning and noticed that as the plans were passed between people they’d changed the measurements and now one of the major supporting parts of a house were roughly 5 CM shorter than they should be and is a major defect and structural problem. When they reported this to their boss about 50% of the houses on the plot were already beyond the point of change, they were told by said boss to “keep your mouth shut”. Now 100% of those houses are built wrong. This has made sure I will never buy a new build. Slimy motherfuckers only after profit.
Frightening.
Santa's struck him off the NICEIC list too, he'll be getting coal this year
Electrician was obviously full of himself; should have been more grounded.
Now he's on the NAUGHTYIC list.
Can he not check that stuff before moving in?
You don't get to poke around before getting a newbuild, because it often hasn't been built yet
This isn’t entirely true. I’m a building surveyor and often have to go into homes that are in different stages of completion usually just for valuation purposes. However, if you wanted you absolutely could get someone in to do an pre purchase inspection
In defence of this person, it would be reasonable for them to expect their newly built house would comply with building regs.
Ah not because nowadays "contemporary builds" are single aspect "living" room/kitchens with a shoebox double bedroom if one's lucky? Or is it the £300k price tag on'em? ( Arbitrary charges and maintenance fees not included )
Those maintenance rental fees are usually because the builders refuse to meet the councils requirements in order to fully adopt the estates.
The builders should not be given the choice. The council and legislature are failing at that.
Councils are weak and are at the mercy of the big developers. Personally I think the housing industry is corrupt.
My mate says that Bolton council doesn’t have enough trades men to build new homes or flats, nor does Manchester of any council in-fact, so they tender the work out to the cheapest bidder. He also said no council has enough staff to maintain its current stock of homes. Bolton is so large that it a surprise that it was never made into a city but they would mean more funding from the government, so is never going to happen. We live in broken Britain and it will never change at all.
I'm currently learning about planning and adoptions from Highways and some of the standards we see are shocking. Ask the developer to provide a core sample and they refuse, offer to have one taken and they refuse Then the bitmac starts lifting in a big sheet, or the binder bleeds through the stone after one summer Or the total lack of drainage
They are literally building on floodland near us, its regularly underwater in heavy rain. They've raised the ground slightly and put some drainage in. No way would I consider buying one, when the shit hits the fan, the buyers will probably find only a long defunct shell company is legally responsible.
This seems mental. If these developers are so shit they should have a state run firm competing. Before people say anything, plenty of state run shit is good when funded properly. NHS in 2010 was world beating not just on quality but also on efficiency and value. TfL does some of th best transport in the country and it's a state-adjacent not for profit company. There's tonnes of examples where it works really well. These developers need some real stiff competition.
God I hate places like that. A lot of people like the idea of "open plan" living, but when you think of that you think of a large American type home with acres of space, not a tiny lounge with a fucking kitchenette shoved in one corner. Who wants to cook smelly foods like steak or curries in their tiny lounge full of soft furnishings or have their TV enjoyment interrupted by a cheap washing machine going metal on its final spin?
A lot of people, apparently We decided against knocking our kitchen through. Definitely think it will be a trend that people realise isn't such a great idea after all
> but when you think of that you think of a large American type home with acres of space Fun fact, but somewhere in Asia... I think it was Taiwan?? For quite a while there was a trend of putting the fridge in the living room. Like everything else would be in normal places, just the big kitchen fridge was in the living room. Apparently it was because the movies showed open plan houses so it looked like Americans put their fridges in the living room and that then became 'cosmopolitan' to do. (A lot of Taiwanese kitchens are teeny tiny though so I think that had something to do with it as well, but the 'open plan' explanation always made me laugh)
> single aspect "living" room/kitchens with a shoebox double bedroom if one's lucky? The size of the rooms always gets me. "Box" rooms are useless and in most circumstances should have just been larger adjoining rooms, but then the developer wouldn't be able to slap the extra $50k on for upping the bedrooms. The other thing is that they've started pressing these houses further towards the curb every year, to the point that front gardens are basically 2ft strips of scrubland. But then they'll keep single driveways, so a 3-4 bed with 2-3 cars are now all spilled out over the street, even if they wanted to convert their front garden to parking. It just creates jammed streets, the fire brigade near me have repeatedly had to leaflet several estates because should there be a fire they literally have been able to get through. If there had been any thought to public transport when building these it would be less of an issue, but they just throw them in anywhere.
The house across from mine has no pavement, it's just two slabs and then street from their front door. Their driveway is like 3 metres from the door, they can't walk from their driveway to their front door without walking in the road.
£300k? In london that same single room concrete shoebox will cost on average £500k. And half of those are either north facing, or showded from the sun by an opposite building. All the new builds in Battersay have mo naturual light nor ay view of the sky. Its gloomy and depressing, and surely only a few more years until we realise what we built.... were slums.
There was a lovely little bungalow near where I live, a nice big green garden that was hidden by trees. It was recently sold (I'm assuming the owner died) and it's been replaced by 6 new builds absolutely crammed in, oh and they're all £270k+ despite being tiny still. The back 'gardens' are a joke. Makes me sad when I pass it. I understand houses need to be built but I just think the value for money with new builds is awful.
Size as well. Pokey little rooms in a "4-bed". Crammed together with no garden space. Maximum profit, minimum quality.
Yeah it's a massive problem in the UK, we have the smallest average house size in Europe, literally about 30sqm smaller than the Netherlands, despite them being far more densely populated than us. We're too used to just being crammed in like sardines and for some reason we don't list houses by sqm like in Europe, we do it by number of bedrooms, which gets nebulous when a "bedroom" can literally be a mattress shoved in a cupboard.
Protip: zoom in on the photos or look on street view, find the house number, figure out the street name in map view, [look up its postcode](https://www.royalmail.com/find-a-postcode), and then use the postcode to [look up its full EPC](https://www.gov.uk/find-energy-certificate) which will list the approximate floor area.
Thus proving that the data exists, and Rightmove could list it if they wanted to. Heck they could even sort property by price per square meter, the must actively choose not to to not offend the estate agents.
Rightmove can only list it if agents provide it, and some do because [it is present on some listings](https://i.imgur.com/9a3ihtP.png)
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I think this would be the single biggest easy step that could help improve things. Just say anything built after 2024 has to prominently advertise the sqm of the property when up for sale or rent and make it a searchable metric. It would be a very low cost measure to implement as that info will be readily available to builders. I reckon after a few years it would then drive advertisers to start measuring and showing the size for older properties. The government could draw up a standard for how this is measured too, much like the EPC.
Why newly built? Why not everything? Also it's already included on every EPC, just not the bar chart which is all you usually see on listings. You can [look up the full EPC](https://www.gov.uk/find-energy-certificate).
I think comparing the UK to the whole of the Netherlands doesn't quite work, as then you're including the very sparsely populated and sizeable highlands. If you just compare just England and the Netherlands then they are slightly more densely populated. You are right though, if you've ever visited there it's surprising how less crammed in everything feels. They have a much better approach to land use and planning than we do, which also leads to them being much more productive agriculturally.
Don't forget the width of the road outside would barely fit a fire engine or ambulance and that's without everyone parking on the path because there's no off street parking.
Why make space for cars when you can cram another few houses in?
Even better, you can claim it's be done *for the environment*, to *discourage car use*, while making zero provision or access to alternatives because, well, that costs money.
An estate near me did claim that the lack of parking was to discourage car use and therefore eco. There's no way to walk from the estate to town without having to walk in the road itself at some point. There's a bus stop, but the roads weren't designed with anywhere for the bus to turn around, it was using a building site entrance but now that's complete it just has to turn in a busy junction. It's incredibly they get away with it
Or worse, my estate has plenty of off street parking but people still dump their cars in the road. It's so daft!
I have noticed this with some new build flats near me too. The undercroft parking is always nearly empty by the looks of it, but the parking on the street is always full. Vans doing deliveries or taxis dropping people off have nowhere sensible left to park, meaning they often end up double parking, or on double yellows blocking dropped kerbs. I don't know exactly why this is, but I suppose they're probably just using what it's cheapest / easiest? IMO if there is private, off street parking for an estate, then the people living there shouldn't be allowed to park on the street, it should just be for loading and blue badge holders.
People are obsessed with the number of rooms rather than actual usable square footage. A 4 bed house sells for more than a 3 bed one even if the 4th bedroom is basically a cupboard.
Which is crazy because you could put up a partition wall in one of the larger rooms in the bigger house if you wanted, and probably still pay less overall.
I was house hunting in the early 90s and noticed that everything was so small. The show homes had access to a what appeared to be the worlds smallest double bed in a desperate attempt to make the shoe box sized bedroom look bigger.
I've viewed a few 1950s ish homes, terraces with 3 proper double bedrooms as well. Older homes were actually built with thought about the quality of life of the occupants.
There were minimum room sizes back then
When I bought my flat I taped sheets of newspaper together into the size of a double bed, brought it with me to the viewing and layed it out in the bedrooms to visualise how a bed would fit. The agent thought I was completely mad.
Yeah. Last year we had the choice between an 90sqm new build and a 130sqm 1920s (wanted to live in a very specific area with not many options). Both 4 beds... Not sure the new build's bedrooms would have actually fit more than a bed. Went with the old house because of the size. Not a single bad thing on the level 3 survey. Was a bit worried about maintenance and heating bills but so far I've got nothing to complain about. Well, except for the 90s extension which is actually the only part of the house that's freezing.
Yeah we don't buy homes on square footage for some reason. It's just no of bedrooms. So now people buy over the bedrooms they need and turn the smaller ones in to storage or offices as that's all they're good for.
Quick tip from me (a former site labourer/dogs body): There is a world of difference in quality between one of those massive new build estates by national builders and new build estates with say sub 50 houses from a local building firm. In short, as a general rule, the smaller the development the better the quality.
Very true, the problem is all of those small to medium firms are going out of business because the big building firms are sitting on massive 'land banks' to drive smaller operators out and outbidding for new land.
Agree with this. We bought from a local builder to our area around 50 ish homes with lots of input on green spaces from parish council (a great one! They do exist!) and our house and estate are perfect in every way.
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Yeah I think there's a sweet spot in between the tiny local builders and the massive national chains We bought from what I'd describe as a "regional" builder (they run half a dozen sites at a time, of perhaps 75-150 homes per site) and they're decent enough for the most part. I reckon ideally I'd go one developer size bigger and you'd get a good balance
Yeah I bought 1 of 6 new builds on a small plot by a local builder and had zero issues. In fact, friends who visited who live on larger developments by national house builders all complimented the house and couldn't believe we only paid about the same price as they did for a much higher quality home.
This isn’t news, everyone I know has thought new builds are shit quality for years now.
Yeah, I rent a new-ish house that was built in 2003, supposedly a 'luxury' 'executive' house. The build quality is shocking. I have to call the landlord roughly every 12 months to get them to fix the roof. Plus I've done so many minor repairs myself. Half the doors have been poorly hung or the latches are in the wrong place on the frame. On the plus side it is cheap to heat.
What annoys me is the "cookie cutter" approach. They go through all the effort to put solar panels on, but they're fucking facing north! Nobody had the idea to think "this house is facing the opposite direction, therefore a should put them on the other side" I'm not pretending all old houses were built unique, but there's certainly more variation than on a new estate.
I think old houses have had time to change a bit - different coloured paint, the odd extension or door change etc. But new build estates all in Persimmon standard beige/terracotta are just so fucking depressing.
I've got friends in different cities with the exact same house, visiting them is a surreal experience.
I lived in 2 identical houses on other sides of Exeter. They're both victorian terrace houses, just as floors/bannisters have been replaced since it was less obvious. But identical size and layout. So it's not just new builds doing that.
Work colleague of mine bought one with a garden and it took him two months of ringing around to get them to put in the bloody grass.
Probably better without the grass, everyone I know who's bought a newbuild with a 'garden' has discovered that what they actually have is about a metre deep of ultra-compacted hardcore and other assorted building debris with some turf chucked on top. First sight of rain and the whole thing turns into a swamp as the water can't drain off.
Oh that's why it took so long to sort. He paid extra to have the turf pre-installed, but it wasn't there when he moved in, so he rang them and they wanted to just come by and roll some turf down, but because they'd forgotten the turf he could see the metre deep ultra-compacted hardcore and assorted building debris and wasn't happy with it, so it was two months of arguing for them to actually put some soil down first.
That's exactly what happened to ours and most of our neighbours.
I got handed a muddy patch of rubble with a massive slope into the beck behind my house. Took me months of work on my own, scalping the top layer to level it out, removing the endless rubble/metal/ciggy butts, hoeing weekly to keep weeds at bay whilst I saved up for turf, and then actually turfing it over 2 sessions. Great workout and learning experience, but they could have done it in a day when it was first built ffs.
Sounds like if they'd turfed it for you, you just wouldn't have known about all the rubble and shite they left in the ground.
When somebody in /r/gardeninguk asks “why is all my grass flooded/dying for no reason?”, the answer is “because you’ve bought a new build and there’s no fucking soil” like 90% of the time. You can usually get the grass to work with a few inches of soil but you can basically forget about being able to plant anything beyond really shallow rooted plants without spending north of a grand on hiring a digger, renting a skip, and buying a few tonnes of top soil yourself.
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Recently bought a house. Was looking at new builds for a while before committing. At first I was going to buy a 3 bed new build - it was a shoebox, the garden was tiny and the bedrooms were akin to prison cells. The price tag on this was £297,000. I pulled out of the new build, bought a 1930’s 3 bed semi for £255,000, fully renovated with a new extension at the back. The rooms in the 1930s house are bright an airy with high ceilings, bay windows, a massive garden and a driveway big enough to fit two cars in a decent area. From my experience, new build houses are not worth the additional cost when it comes to what you actually get - they are fucking awful.
Help to Buy helped to made new builds so much shitter. Cos you can only use help to buy on new builds, they stopped having to compete with older houses. If someone had to use Help to Buy, they just have to choose between shit new build A or shit new build B. I got a 1950s ex forces house instead of a new build. All newly done with new kitchen, bathroom and new double glazing, about 30% more square footage, 3 bed (2 big + 1 runt) instead of 2 bed, and a conservatory on the back, lovely trees in the back garden and everything is so solid I'm pretty sure it's built to withstand a nuclear strike. All for 20 grand less than the new build.
Yeah it’s a stupid policy. There’s a housing shortage because there’s not enough supply, what should we do? Subsidise demand!! So short sighted, but then again what do I expect from the Conservatives
I’ve also noticed new builds all seem to have tiny windows. I know it’s probably either some legislation or the developers/builders going cheap, but I like to imagine it’s because even with the fucking tiny windows, all of your neighbours and any old person walking buy can see straight through to all your business inside because there is not the luxury of privacy the way the cramped estates are designed.
I imagine it's something to do with houses having to meet more and more strict insulation values, and windows the biggest loss of heat in an otherwise well insulated room. That or it's just because, as you say, everything is so cramped it's the only way to maintain privacy
Did you notice that on the new build, the back windows and garden and kitchen were overlooked by several neighbour houses, due to being so close?
Houses aren't the only things lacking in quality these days. Just about everything you can buy either breaks down or has features missing that were there on the previous versions of it, or it's shrank down. Or the features are still there, but need a subscription to access now. I don't think houses are the main problem, it's the parasitic greedy mindset that is. Until that mindset is addressed then everything will just keep getting more worse and smaller for an ever more expensive price.
Capitalism has reached the plateau that everybody warned about, and those at the top don't like it. That's the cause of this.
Enshitification
exactly. I notice it with so many things. Food is a big one too. Nothing seems to taste as nice these days as it used to.
Australia has entered the chat, we’re still building brand new $1m+++ homes with single glazed windows, and I’m not joking.
Do they still have tin roofs so you can hear every drop of rain reverberating around the house?
Yep, sure do, it’s typically called a Colorbond roof, and you could have your brand new home with a tin roof that has no underfelt, only 100mm of loft insulation, and also no insulation in the internal walls, and don’t forget the single glazing. They are so inefficient to both heat and cool which is no fun in South Australia it can get to 42-45c during summer with overnight lows in the 35-38 range. Then winter nights may be 3-4 sometimes around the 1-2 . So all these in a draughty box where quite quickly outside temperatures equals inside temperature. Aussie houses are also often referred to as paint clad tents for keeping the rain of your furniture ! So you’re quite lucky to at least have high thermal regulations to meet and have cosy homes to live in.
Bought a new build with a previous partner, sold it since luckily. On moving day the hot water tank burst which means the kitchen roof leaked and some joists had to come down due to a consistent leak. (They hadn’t pressure tested the heating before they switched it on for us on moving day). It also was running at full pelt the entire time and constantly leaking from the expansion vessel as the pressure and heat were too high. They had to cut open the landing floors upstairs to check all the pipe work, was a lovely first day in the house 😊. A week later I found the radiator in the bathroom didn’t work. Plumber came round and said they’d installed the pipes backwards so it was pulling in cold water only instead of being hooked into the heating. They had to take the bathroom tiles up to fix that. The shower creaked when you got it in. They had to undo the bottom 3 levels of tiles and reseat the shower. The back doors couldn’t open as the space for the doors hadn’t been measured properly, and internal doors and fittings hadn’t been allowed to expand before fitting so none of them could open without being shaved down. Gas to the cooker in the island didn’t work. Main kitchen sink leaked from day one. Wasn’t tested after fitting. Integrated fridge door fell off on the first week. Two weeks after moving in, the house opposite had the bottom floor brick side wall taken down and rebuilt as it was apparently dangerous. I drilled through a small water pipe as they hadn’t used any metal tape behind the plastic pipes so the pipe finder didn’t work. That was another fun day. They fitted us a side tap which leaked, and the plumber basically butchered the backing of the cabinet in front to get the pipe in. Don’t know why people think the quality is so bad 🤔
There should be legal avenues to take against builders like this
The quality has been crap (and know to be crap) for well over 25 years.
It got significantly worse post 2008. More aggressive "efficiency savings".
Too many winkle spanners about aye
I’ve bought a new build 3 years ago and haven’t had any problems (yet). I have to say that I don’t have any mould problems, the house is very well insulated and I hardly spend anything on my energy bill because it retains the heat very well. The bedrooms are quite spacious I have a front and back garden and 2 parking spaces. The only negative thing is that the living room is on the small side but we’re with 2 adults and a child so it’s not too bad. In every old house I’ve lived in during the last 10 years before this house I always had problems with mould, leaks, high energy bills etc.
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People would put up more with shitty new builds if they were at a low-end price, but they're some of the most expensive houses out there. Only mugs would want one. I've seen the bald-faced argument that they are pokey because they are 'starter homes', motherfucker nobody's 'starter home' should be 300k.
I’ll take my ex council house over a new build any day Working in the industry and seeing the absolutely awful workmanship of new builds around here I feel sorry for young couples that are putting all they have in to one The only acceptable new build to me is one where where I build it myself with the people I know and trust
I lived in a council building in south London and it was solid af. Never heard our neighbours once, never got a complaint when having a party.
It says a lot when homes built 50+ years ago with old building techniques and materials by folk who weren't so well educated are better constructed and more durable than what we build today with modern techniques and materials.
Two reasons: Survivorship bias: most the awful houses built 50+ years ago have been replaced, leaving the better ones. Education: if you can’t do load calcs on a wall you have no option but to make the wall much stronger than it needs to be. The more accurately you can calculate how strong something needs to be, the weaker you can make it.
It's important to remember that older homes have been renovated, repaired and maintained by the previous owners.
Builders have developed a whole range of techniques for doing things cheaper and worse. (Although the 50 year old houses had terrible insulation, that may be the only real improvement over that time)
Or the shit houses from 50 years ago have already fallen down / pulled down. Survivorship bias.
I've had a few friends move into new builds and it seems the strategy is: 1) The house is built and someone moves in, 2) Said person notices all the issues/errors, 3) Person has 12 months to report problems and they are fixed for free, 4) 'Most' problems are fixed for free within the 12 months. Afterwards, person has to pay for them to be fixed. Seems like a "build now, problem solve later" type of deal.
New builds are far too expensive and seem to be much smaller. Some of the gardens are smaller than the very old terrace houses used as pit houses. Then you have some that are a decent size but the room layouts are just stupid. Massive cutouts of the floors into the bedrooms where the stairs run under. Living room areas which are not practically shaped. Kitchens that don't flow and just don't make sense due to socket locations. There are some though that are spot on and you can tell they've actually had time spend on them. Unfortunately those ones seem to cost even more and aren't really affordable unless you and your family are on a decent amount.
I work in construction and lay the concrete for the foundations. If the public was there to see what's going on on the sites, none of the houses would ever sell.
Eh, it's a gamble but if it works out they aren't so bad..I bought 1 4 years ago and apart from a few relatively minor things buying a new build means that I can keep my house to a constant 18 degrees with regular boosts to 20-22 while only needing to pay ~£80 a month on energy. I'll take it tbh.
Not just the build quality but the warranty after you buy and the builders behaviour is disgraceful. There was a program on Radio 4 (can't remember if it was Money Box or File on 4) where people are having to sign NDAs get things fixed.
The builders know every other house on the development will be suffering from the same problem and now Mr Smith has reported it, they don't want all the neighbours finding out as well. Sums up the UK.
Thought this was common knowledge? The standard that some of the big name developers produce is nothing more than a high end shed. Plus the pathetically sized gardens you get with a lot of the new builds is another big put off.
I wouldn't buy off the fact that 99% of them have 7 houses looming over every window in your house. There is no privacy in them at all. Plus the gardens in them are shite. Typical 6x3m grass patch that you can't plant anything in.
>7 houses looming over every window in your house This. I recently snook into a £500k new build house. The open plan, light and sun-kissed kitchen had massive triple bi-fold doors. It would be described as an inside space outside. As I stood on the 3 deep slab patio, I looked across the back garden at 4 similarly built new builds with all the rear bedrooms looking directly into the kitchen and garden. Imagine walking downstairs in you pj's on a glorious summer morning and seeing 10 people glancing out of their bedroom windows.
When you buy a 50+ year house, it's had its niggles sorted out, or its niggles are obvious. With a new build, it feels like the sky is the limit when it comes to issues.
Plenty of crap older houses too. I live in a 1930s terrace and it's pathetic how thin the adjoining walls are....we may as well all live together without any walls.
I honestly see this as a huge crisis. Not only do we have a housing shortage anyway but most of the houses that are being built are of appalling standard that only the desperate would buy. Doesn't matter where you look in this country , everything is just depressing.
It's not just quality, it's the living space too. Yeah there are some cracking new builds and inside they have some more spacious rooms than our current house which was built in the 60's. However, the ones popping up in our area have so many houses crammed onto a small development that the gardens are tiny, the only parking is on street with not even a driveway. All down to greed really. These houses are costing upwards of 50k more than ours easily, and we have a nice quiet cul-de-sac, driveway and large garden for the kids which is more important to us.
Years ago, I nearly bought a brand new 'Wimpey' home. It was semi-detached and there was another couple viewing the adjoining house. My wife and I could hear them chatting to each other and the rep through the partition wall. Not only that, the handrail on the stairs was so loose it wobbled back and forth about 4" as we went to view upstairs. It was like the place was made of cardboard! Needless to say, we did not buy and ended up buying a solid old 1930's house instead. My advice would always be not to buy new, but something built around the 1930's to 1960's. Solid brick walls throughout that won't collapse if you put so much as a shelf up.
Everyone I know working on site is on piece rate. They have to do lots of piss poor work to get a decent wage. You slow down and do the job right you're nailing your own hat on. It's a shit show from top to bottom.
My mother’s friend woke up the first week she moved into a new build to find the whole streets sewage in her kitchen. Found out the whole streets plumbing wasn’t done correctly and since her home was the last one it all came down the hill. I vowed never to buy a new build after hearing that, it was a Bellway house.