The nervous wait to exchange....

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
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9,158
It's been there for 30 years, so I wouldn't be too worried, seller should pay for an indemnity policy and then you're sorted.
Indemnity will be crazy cheap as it's not covering things like it falling down etc. Our sale got delayed 2 weeks because the solicitors were chasing the sellers for £12.99!
 
Associate
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18 Oct 2002
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1,796
Our contracts to buy signed and returned to solicitor. Understand our buyers have returned theirs. Waiting on an update from solicitor but at least it seems to be moving. Trying to work out how long it will take then now or how long they wait until they exchange contracts so we can look to set completion date.
 
Soldato
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Well Linden have emailed to say that the bank have booked in a valuation for Monday. I'm feeling a bit optimistic as I expect if they weren't going to give us a mortgage they wouldn't even bother with a valuation so I have my fingers crossed we are going in the correct direction
 
Soldato
Joined
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Fareham
Well Linden have emailed to say that the bank have booked in a valuation for Monday. I'm feeling a bit optimistic as I expect if they weren't going to give us a mortgage they wouldn't even bother with a valuation so I have my fingers crossed we are going in the correct direction

Oh god you're going with Linden, good luck is all I can say. Once they have your money you won't hear from them again.

I had outstanding snags for more than a year (approaching 2 years) that they were just useless at even trying to address.

If you do proceed I would do so with caution, I would definitely not use their recommended solicitors, and I would also encourage you to consider getting your solicitor to add a retention against them actually addressing your snagging issues after completion. They talk it up like they care, but I found the exact opposite.

I had 4 or 5 different "customer service" reps who kept leaving, which itself speaks volumes about how their staff are treated. The constant excuse was lack of staff, sometimes they just turn the phone line off for customer services.

On top of this, shoddily built houses, almost no walls were straight/level, I had undulations in the bathroom floor where the floorboards were laid when damp and later left to dry out, and a creaking sound in the 2nd bedroom floor which they never managed to fix. The flooring in the 3rd bedroom was bouncy. Turf was laid on uneven ground and just became a marsh in the rain due to doing no actual proper prep for laying the turf.

They also had an MVHR heat recovery system in the house (recycles air inside without trickle vents/having windows open), which you are meant to service, except the unit is in the loft, they don't give you a ladder as standard, and the unit is just noisy. On my home demo they had it switched off at the fuse box, told me it was silent in operation (there are vents in each room), but didn't care a single iota when I discovered it was not turned on and was in fact noisy in operation.

I sold the place at a loss after 2 years of living there, instead I bought a TW home which seems to be made much better.
 
Caporegime
Joined
21 Jun 2006
Posts
38,372
My view also. Cameras, things like this, they are superflous technology which you would never expect to be included with a property. I'd categorise them in with computers or televisions. A Nest thermostat though, this is an integral part of the central heating system and to be honest swapping it i would view in the same manner as someone swapping the water cylinder, boiler/integrated appliances for inferior items prior to completion.

what?

swapping a nest thermostat for a normal thermostat is no different to cameras, tvs, etc.

a nest thermostat is £250 a normal one will be peanuts like £25.

a nest thermostat isn't an integral part of the system however you would need to pay someone like £150 to come and uninstall it. not only the thermostat but the boiler controls too. then install others. which would cost you more than £100.

therefore I would leave mine in situ and buy a new one if i moved.

however it's like saying smart bulbs are an integral part of the lighting system. they aren't and can be replaced with dumb versions no issue. and still do the same job which is light up the home.
 
Caporegime
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21 Jun 2006
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38,372
Ive read of people removing radiators and leaving bare wires hanging from the ceiling which sounds slightly dangerous. The lesson there would be to name everything included when buying, I'd want the central heating system left even if its possible to remove I dont want to be moving into a stone cold house and unable to occupy that house comfortably as it was used just prior. So sinks and stuff should be left, I guess it all has to be named to be sure.

My sister gave me her new address while she was moving, there was a 1 day offer for some kids toys for the garden which I sent to that address and it arrived earlier then written and the parcel was taken by the people selling the house which is pretty sad. Wasnt expensive but still

that is theft. especially if it was in your sisters name. unless it was a gifted parcel with no name on it?
 
Soldato
Joined
20 Dec 2004
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15,763
Been and registered with the estate agents in our target village today, all systems go.

Rather worryingly, a very nice grade 2 listed cottage we thought had already sold has popped up and we've got a viewing tomorrow :S Would it be wrong to jump on the first property you view if it ticks all the boxes? :)
 
Soldato
Joined
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17,281
Location
Bristol
Been and registered with the estate agents in our target village today, all systems go.

Rather worryingly, a very nice grade 2 listed cottage we thought had already sold has popped up and we've got a viewing tomorrow :S Would it be wrong to jump on the first property you view if it ticks all the boxes? :)

Nope. Both houses we've bought were the first/only ones we viewed. Can't be bothered to faff about.

Some of our friends have spent ages looking, being nit picky, meanwhile house prices keep on rising and they settle for something they could have got at the start after realising nothing will ever be perfect.
 
Caporegime
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Been and registered with the estate agents in our target village today, all systems go.

Rather worryingly, a very nice grade 2 listed cottage we thought had already sold has popped up and we've got a viewing tomorrow :S Would it be wrong to jump on the first property you view if it ticks all the boxes? :)

No!

We've seen 3 houses I've liked in 6 months
And only 2 were contenders after viewing.
One was the very first one we viewed in month 2, one was a month later. I'm still getting the alerts for my search criteria.

Id still have had either now. But yep, if we lose the one we are progressing with now is back to square one and probably 6 months more rent

I've a long list of criteria in a tight budget
Detached
30 min commute /into Cardiff
Decent Garden
Garage
3 bed +

So houses don't come up much I'm my bracket.
 
Soldato
Joined
20 Dec 2004
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15,763
No!

We've seen 3 houses I've liked in 6 months
And only 2 were contenders after viewing.
One was the very first one we viewed in month 2, one was a month later. I'm still getting the alerts for my search criteria.

Id still have had either now. But yep, if we lose the one we are progressing with now is back to square one and probably 6 months more rent

I've a long list of criteria in a tight budget
Detached
30 min commute /into Cardiff
Decent Garden
Garage
3 bed +

So houses don't come up much I'm my bracket.

Well the house we viewed was really nice, just what we wanted...the only downside being the shared rear garden area. It's a row of 200 year old listed cottages, each one has a long slice of garden with a shed at the end, but no-one has fences up (just bits of trellis)....which is nice because you get the community aspect we're keen on, and there's loads of sun. Downside is next door has a whippet which means we won't be able to let our rabbit roam free in the garden. Not that we would much anyway because foxes, but still. Only real downside, which is also a plus.

Hunting around for a surveyor that knows what they're doing with listed properties now. Viewing it again this week in the daylight.
 
Soldato
Joined
11 Jun 2015
Posts
11,090
Location
Bristol
Oh god you're going with Linden, good luck is all I can say. Once they have your money you won't hear from them again.

I had outstanding snags for more than a year (approaching 2 years) that they were just useless at even trying to address.

If you do proceed I would do so with caution, I would definitely not use their recommended solicitors, and I would also encourage you to consider getting your solicitor to add a retention against them actually addressing your snagging issues after completion. They talk it up like they care, but I found the exact opposite.

I had 4 or 5 different "customer service" reps who kept leaving, which itself speaks volumes about how their staff are treated. The constant excuse was lack of staff, sometimes they just turn the phone line off for customer services.

On top of this, shoddily built houses, almost no walls were straight/level, I had undulations in the bathroom floor where the floorboards were laid when damp and later left to dry out, and a creaking sound in the 2nd bedroom floor which they never managed to fix. The flooring in the 3rd bedroom was bouncy. Turf was laid on uneven ground and just became a marsh in the rain due to doing no actual proper prep for laying the turf.

They also had an MVHR heat recovery system in the house (recycles air inside without trickle vents/having windows open), which you are meant to service, except the unit is in the loft, they don't give you a ladder as standard, and the unit is just noisy. On my home demo they had it switched off at the fuse box, told me it was silent in operation (there are vents in each room), but didn't care a single iota when I discovered it was not turned on and was in fact noisy in operation.

I sold the place at a loss after 2 years of living there, instead I bought a TW home which seems to be made much better.
We've heard a few of the horror stories and read some online which made us worry but my friends who've were some of the first to buy on the estate and have been there for 4/5 months now have had nothing but praise to say about them and said their only complaint was the garden only being top-soil but was to be expected. My cousin bought a large 4 bed TW house and even though the garden was massive he had the same issue. The garden was basically a mud and clay pit. His only positive words about them were that they never ended up charging him for the £10k worth of extras he and his wife picked!
Been and registered with the estate agents in our target village today, all systems go.

Rather worryingly, a very nice grade 2 listed cottage we thought had already sold has popped up and we've got a viewing tomorrow :S Would it be wrong to jump on the first property you view if it ticks all the boxes? :)

I wouldn't think it's a worry if you know it's what you're after. We had a few places shortlisted that we wanted to view but we ended up reserving the first one and not even bother viewing the other properties as it ticked all the boxes. We just knew it was the right one after viewing it for 20 minutes.
 
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Soldato
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We've heard a few of the horror stories and read some online which made us worry but my friends who've were some of the first to buy on the estate and have been there for 4/5 months now have had nothing but praise to say about them and said their only complaint was the garden only being top-soil but was to be expected. My cousin bought a large 4 bed TW house and even though the garden was massive he had the same issue. The garden was basically a mud and clay pit. His only positive words about them were that they never ended up charging him for the £10k worth of extras he and his wife picked!
End of the day it wil depend on the contractors on the individual site. My dad's is a Taylor Wimpey one and it is stunning and perfect inside, as are two of his neighbours I've been in
 
Soldato
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Location
Bristol
End of the day it wil depend on the contractors on the individual site. My dad's is a Taylor Wimpey one and it is stunning and perfect inside, as are two of his neighbours I've been in

For what it's worth. The TW house he has is stunning. I think one of the only problems he had with the house was that the door leading from the garage to the garden had expanded and was bowed and letting water in. Beyond that I think everything was perfect. A colleague also moved to a smaller 2 bed house on the same estate and she had some issues where they put the fence down in the wrong place so she had an extra metre or so of garden. When they had to fix it they ended up landscaping her garden for free due to the issue.

We really like the house we are going to but it's the area we like more. Not much space for other new build houses in the area so we snapped at the chance. I do hope it's smooth sailing though but you never know until you're in there. Luckily there will be more houses getting built in the area so any snags should be easy to fix whilst the builders are on site. Fingers crossed
 
Soldato
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Fareham
For what it's worth. The TW house he has is stunning. I think one of the only problems he had with the house was that the door leading from the garage to the garden had expanded and was bowed and letting water in. Beyond that I think everything was perfect. A colleague also moved to a smaller 2 bed house on the same estate and she had some issues where they put the fence down in the wrong place so she had an extra metre or so of garden. When they had to fix it they ended up landscaping her garden for free due to the issue.

We really like the house we are going to but it's the area we like more. Not much space for other new build houses in the area so we snapped at the chance. I do hope it's smooth sailing though but you never know until you're in there. Luckily there will be more houses getting built in the area so any snags should be easy to fix whilst the builders are on site. Fingers crossed

For me it went beyond the quality of the contractors on site, the Linden company as a whole seemed to not care about much at all, they have your cash, so it's goodbye to any complaints. NHBC are in cahoots with them and are toothless really, so don't believe them if they try and big up the 10 year warranty, it's worthless unless your house is falling down due to subsidence.

Beyond what I said above, I was told things that simply turned out not to be true, Linden didn't have any thing to say other than "sorry not sorry".

There have been some cases around where they have screwed people over and have made no moves to fix it, this isn't even down to build quality, more like taking hundreds of thousands of £'s and leaving people with serious problems.

Examples:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5675781/How-dash-build-turning-dream-homes-nightmares.html

Need to register to read the article, but you can watch the video.
https://www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/w...sbury-green-house-she-can-t-live-in-1-8969272

At the end of the day you have to make the call to proceed or not, but I would 100% recommend doing a few things if you do, in summary:
  • Do not use their solicitors, please. Find your own who will work 100% in your interests.
  • See if you can get an agreement on a snagging retention at say 5% of the house price, if asked why you want one, state that you know people who've moved into new build homes where problems were never fixed properly, or were not fixed for very long periods of time.
  • Check which management company you will be palmed off onto, in my case it was FirstPort, if you review FirstPort online you will see no good can come of being a customer of theirs. Linden will only do the management until the site is finished, then they'll put you to a 3rd party.
  • If/when you move in, check for damage quickly. If anything has been damaged report it right away, they will blame you if it's beyond 14 days since you moved in.
 
Soldato
Joined
3 Oct 2009
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19,892
Location
Wales
My brother is also now set on a new build but it's a smaller local developer to him not one of the big national ones, but big enough that they know what they are doing. He's getting a mega deal with incentives and extras too. Hopefully it's trouble free for him.
 
Soldato
Joined
20 Dec 2004
Posts
15,763
Second viewing of the nice listed terrace this morning. Think we'll be putting an offer in later after mulling it over the last few days.

It is a bit small, but all the space is excellently used. Kitchen has more storage and a dishwasher compared to this big detached rental we're in at the mo. 3rd bedroom here is wasted too and we don't have or want kids, so leaning towards going for the really unique characterful and impractical option!
 
Soldato
Joined
11 Jun 2015
Posts
11,090
Location
Bristol
For me it went beyond the quality of the contractors on site, the Linden company as a whole seemed to not care about much at all, they have your cash, so it's goodbye to any complaints. NHBC are in cahoots with them and are toothless really, so don't believe them if they try and big up the 10 year warranty, it's worthless unless your house is falling down due to subsidence.

Beyond what I said above, I was told things that simply turned out not to be true, Linden didn't have any thing to say other than "sorry not sorry".

There have been some cases around where they have screwed people over and have made no moves to fix it, this isn't even down to build quality, more like taking hundreds of thousands of £'s and leaving people with serious problems.

Examples:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5675781/How-dash-build-turning-dream-homes-nightmares.html

Need to register to read the article, but you can watch the video.
https://www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/w...sbury-green-house-she-can-t-live-in-1-8969272

At the end of the day you have to make the call to proceed or not, but I would 100% recommend doing a few things if you do, in summary:
  • Do not use their solicitors, please. Find your own who will work 100% in your interests.
  • See if you can get an agreement on a snagging retention at say 5% of the house price, if asked why you want one, state that you know people who've moved into new build homes where problems were never fixed properly, or were not fixed for very long periods of time.
  • Check which management company you will be palmed off onto, in my case it was FirstPort, if you review FirstPort online you will see no good can come of being a customer of theirs. Linden will only do the management until the site is finished, then they'll put you to a 3rd party.
  • If/when you move in, check for damage quickly. If anything has been damaged report it right away, they will blame you if it's beyond 14 days since you moved in.

We've definitely thought about getting in some snag finders since it was mentioned in this thread. We weren't going to go with the recommended solicitor as my partners sister-in-law was able to get us good discount on one but they were in Kent and we have to meet the exchange date in order to get the incentives which they have offered us and we didn't want to risk losing out on those as it would've lost us a good £7/8K which is going to be very helpful.

It's both our first time buying and the whole process was daunting enough that we just wanted to go the most stress-free route. But I can't lie, reading you post does get me a bit sick in the stomach! Really hoping it's as smooth as my friends had it!

My brother is also now set on a new build but it's a smaller local developer to him not one of the big national ones, but big enough that they know what they are doing. He's getting a mega deal with incentives and extras too. Hopefully it's trouble free for him.

Fingers crossed for you brother. We saw the appeal as we didn't want to do any work to the house we picked. Neither of us are exactly DIY experts so we wanted something read to go from day 0. Also got a very good deal so hopefully both ours and your brothers goes smoothly

Second viewing of the nice listed terrace this morning. Think we'll be putting an offer in later after mulling it over the last few days.

It is a bit small, but all the space is excellently used. Kitchen has more storage and a dishwasher compared to this big detached rental we're in at the mo. 3rd bedroom here is wasted too and we don't have or want kids, so leaning towards going for the really unique characterful and impractical option!

Hopefully it all goes smooth for you! I do find older houses have so much more character than new builds. New builds sort of feel like Monopoly houses and Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V
 
Caporegime
Joined
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32,495
Location
Llaneirwg
Really close now on our house.

Last searches through
Enquires all answered
LISA money should arrive at solicitors next Monday
Paperwork all signed and arrived

Feel like we can get to exchange next week or week after.
 
Soldato
Joined
11 Jun 2015
Posts
11,090
Location
Bristol
Feeling like you can finally get excited now?

We're basically at the start of the process. Just had the valuation take place yesterday but even now it's hard not to get excited
 
Soldato
Joined
20 Dec 2004
Posts
15,763
Put offer in at lunch time. Bit weird doing it through an app, but hey ho. Agent rang and said the seller really does mean offers in excess of, so it will probably be turned down. I expected a bit of back and forth so we'll see.
 
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