First time buyer new house

Hooa

Hooa

Hooa

Associate
Joined
29 Aug 2009
Posts
374
Near where I live is a barrat homes development. The house prices seem quite reasonable and with the 5 year warranty etc it seems like it deserves consideration. I never really thought about getting a new house as you always here things like ‘they lose value quickly’, ‘they are built rubbish and fall apart’, ‘the walls are really thin and you can hear everything’, ‘no decent views’ ‘jammed in like sardines’...

Would just like to hear peoples views, hopefully from people with some experience :)

Thanks!
 
I can only agree.. As Chelmsford attracts more buyers from London cashing in equity, the cheaper and condensed new builds have become. There were two football pitches near us.. There are hundreds of properties built and most of them occupied by commuters. No drives, no Gardens and bathroom you can shake your neighbour through the window with.. All over inflated which drives other properties up wards..
 
you'll be the only true judge of it because it's you who will be living in it. i personally wouldn't touch one of those metric box nightmares with someone else's money, let alone my own.
 
I looked around a lot of new build houses when looking a year ago, they were developing massively in North Swindon so there were plenty of different house builders to look at. I thought that the sizes of rooms were generally quite good compared to houses built in, say, the 1960's where the 3rd 'bedroom' could just about squeeze a bed in and that was it. The thought of having a new central heating system, electricals and fittings quite appealled too. Also most new houses come with en-suite bathrooms and more toilets than you can shake a stick at. However, I never saw a new build with a decent front garden (meaning passers by cant peer into your living room) and back gardens the size of postage stamps. The paper thin walls thing is true though, you don't realise this when looking around a show home with no-one else living around there, the sound proofing really is quite bad.
 
The paper thin walls thing is true though, you don't realise this when looking around a show home with no-one else living around there, the sound proofing really is quite bad.
Click to expand...

quoted for truth
 
one of things i noticed on my mortgage app and house insurance app was the question 'is the property timber framed' as this was N/A for me, i didn't pay much attention. i can only assume that mortgage and insurance have an issue with timber framed buildings but didn't know whether they were referring to a georgian type timber frame (with wattle and daub) or a timber frame build which a lot of modern houses are now constructed with?
 
I've been in my new build Barratts flat for 8 months, and it is great!

That said, the houses in the development are tiny and not really worth the price imo.
 
danielanthony said:
The paper thin walls thing is true though, you don't realise this when looking around a show home with no-one else living around there, the sound proofing really is quite bad.
Click to expand...

Really? My 2008 built house has the best sound-proofing i have ever come across. In 3 years I am yet to hear any of my neighbours through the walls.
 
My folks have a new build house (built circa 2003), not sure if it's Barrett or not (think not) but I'll highlight what I can. It's a terraced three floor town house btw.

- Insulation is very good, only the ground floor is ever cold when the heating isn't on. Dining room/kitchen has a ceiling fan because it's unbearably hot eating in there when the oven and hob have been on.
- Some of the build quality is terrible - particularly the plumbing, a few years after they moved in the shower base started sagging, and a dead rat was behind the wall in the downstairs toilet.
- Parking; all the houses down their street have a garage and a drive in front of it. No-one uses their garage, they're just too small for modern cars, so everyone parks their second car on their front gardens (which are gravel). I'm afraid it's one of those stupid developments where the council will only give planning permission if they make street parking difficult, which just means that people park on the pavement which looks a bit scruffy. There are some dedicated spaces for visitors though so not usually a problem when I visit (though one guy claims they belong to him :rolleyes: )
- Living room is an odd shape making it hard to find a layout where everyone can see the TV.
- Never had a problem with soundproofing as far as I know. Sure if the neighbours are doing DIY you can hear the drills, hammers etc. I'd say the soundproofing was a lot better than in my 1970's era terraced house.

Overall, it wouldn't be my cup of tea but it suits my parent's needs quite nicely - they only live there approx 6 months of the year anyway.
 
Last edited:
I moved into my new build semi at the end of 2003. New rules on soundproofing came in in January 2004 (our development had to meet the new rules as some of the properties were not scheduled to be completed until after that date). I can't say I've had any real issues with noise with my current neighbours.
 
Diesel said:
Really? My 2008 built house has the best sound-proofing i have ever come across. In 3 years I am yet to hear any of my neighbours through the walls.
Click to expand...

You need to check your hearing :p

either that or your neighboors have been murdered a long time ago.
 
Modern houses are made of cheese.
Poor quality components, and push fix plumbing, that will fail, long before copper ones do.
Often tiny in size, small gardens, and garages that you will struggle to fit a mini in.
Roads are so narrow, that you cant park on them without major causing traffic problems

The only plus side on them is insulation, is good.

I would never touch a new build (1980 on)
 
cm1179 said:
one of things i noticed on my mortgage app and house insurance app was the question 'is the property timber framed' as this was N/A for me, i didn't pay much attention. i can only assume that mortgage and insurance have an issue with timber framed buildings but didn't know whether they were referring to a georgian type timber frame (with wattle and daub) or a timber frame build which a lot of modern houses are now constructed with?
Click to expand...

timber framed are becoming the norm now as they are cheaper to put up and build as opposed to a full bricks'n'mortar build.
 
My Taylor Wimpey home is fine, no issues with thin walls (can occasionally hear the sub from the neighbours when my house is silent which is rare any ways). It's a semi detached / end terrance.

The room sizes are good (two bed) and the back garden is very ample. Dedicated parking spot.

Been through the builders who have put things right that I've requested with little to no problems. I honestly don't have a bad word to say about the houses as they have been great for me thus far.
 
Thanks for all the feedback! Seems like all houses then in that some are good and some are not. I can confirm though that this one seems very generic i.e. very small garage, lots of toilets and no front garden so everyone can look straight in.

Maybe it would be better to find an older renovated property so I can move straight in and not have to do much but benefit from thicker walls, bigger garden/better views?
 
InvaderGIR said:
Would be helpful if you went on to explain this as the OP obviously knows nothing about the company (as I suspect neither do a lot of others here).
Click to expand...

Barrat homes had quite a reputation on poor build quality as was regularly featured on programs like Watchdog where various complaints weren't being recognised (poor aftersales).

The comments that the OP mentioned that puts him off new builds aren't too far off the mark.
With large scale housing firms, not just exclusively Barrat, they are as you'd expect be operating to make a profit. So that means they will want to use as little material as possible to get things passed off by building standards / NHBC (I can only assume they would be NHBC registered). Outwith the likes of separating walls in semi detatched properties which do have sound proofing / fire standards the rest of the internal partitions (more often than not are timber) are as thin as possible (typically 70 / 75 mm plus plasterboard eitherside) so you can hear someone fart in the next room! Its only in the current regs (Oct 2010) that there are allowances for sound insulation between rooms and floors within a house.

The no decent views / jammed in like sardines comment is also true, in space planning a typical plot size has to be the minimum of 400square metres (although I've seen smaller and cant fathom how they were allowed) which if you're plonking on a house which is say 10 m x 8 m and you've got to have it set back say 6 metres for a driveway and include a 30square metre garage as well, doesn't leave you a lot of room to your neighbours property. Again this comes down to how much can we fit in to make a profit. This also applies to the rooms within the house as well. E.g an accessible apartment (biggest bedroom) needs only to be 12 square metres in size and once you add in your furniture doesn't leave a huge amount of space and any other bedrooms can be smaller and still classed as 'a double bedroom'.

What happens with the developments as well is the developer will build the show home and fit it out with some luxuries addons....e.g luxury kitchen with expensive taps, hardwood flooring carpets etc and will add about 10 - 40 grand onto the 'standard' house so when the show home is sold it pushes the price of the rest of they're houses up that little bit more coupled with the various add ons which they will charge the customer for snowballing the cost to the person even further.

Unfortunately with housing done this way its taking over where the council housing left off but in a worse way. The council houses round (60 - 70s) here have got decent sized rooms along with a good sized front and rear gardens whilst the new builds have relatively pokey gardens with rooms you can barely swing a cat in but sell for almost double the price. I would probably guess that its cheaper to get an ex council house and add some insulation in the roof and replace the windows (wall insulation may be an issue but thats the only drawback) and maybe replace the boiler and you'd have just as good a property.

Anyway I'm getting a bit ranty now so I'll stop :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom