Glad I bought my first house in 1972 a modern 3 bed semi for £3,600 when I was earning £1,400 a year, it was a struggle but better than buying a new VW Devon camper that's for sure.
House prices are a joke now. Average house prices are near to 8x average wage. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Yep and it used to be that you couldn’t borrow more than three times the main incomes wages and once times the others.If the greedy banks hadn’t changed the rules house prices would have stayed realistic and if we’d stayed more European our houses would have been some where just to live , and made it more affordable for the everyday peeps. Only trub is with Brexit, is this the time the banks will reel in more money buy crashing the market and buying up all the houses again . They won’t want to be on the loosing end that’s fa sure . Let’s face it like our vans it’s not real money till you sell huh .
New homes development near me built on old landfill, cheapest the 2 bed flats start at 400,000 up to the 5 bed detached for 1.3 million. 3 bed semis at 550,000 and none of the houses have gardens to speak of and the houses are packed in close together. One thing I noticed was the detached houses have one bricked up window, why is that? Who can afford such homes and who wants to live on a landfill, and with 27 acres of more landfill next to it. The original planning application was granted based on provision of a lot of affordables, but the squirmy developers and council did a deal where the council took cash instead, so no affordables at all. Property developers don't build homes, they are finance companies and they subcontract everything. They buy up land and sit on it for years knowing that one day they can make a killing, stuffing as many homes into it as possible and selling at sky high prices. Their new builds are chucked up, filled with bling and once sold they have no obligation to put right any faults, buyers are not protected at all in law, more protection buying a toaster from argos. The whole housing situation is a mess like the old landfill. I am particularly interested in the landfill development and the dumped material still intact after 50 years under the ground. Much of the old waste was dug out and trucked to another active landfill 25 miles away at Sevenoaks, redumping old waste? whats that about? Other pockets of waste left onsite are covered over and used as gardens and roads.
"once sold they have no obligation to put right any faults, buyers are not protected at all in law, more protection buying a toaster from argos." Yes they do, yes they are, and no there isn't.
I have to pick you up on that, the truth is buyers have little protection, even a NHBC guarantee has little worth. In practice there are thousands out there trying to get faults etc remedied and if they have the money they have to resort to the Courts. search online and you will get the true picture, its a scandal.
Of course a percentage have problems. At the moment there are all sorts of issues regarding mortars etc. The vast majority of people don't have these issues, and have more than adequate protection afforded by NHBC. I don't need to google it. No-one ever writes good reviews. They're always used as leverage when something goes wrong, so are generally completely one sided.
I have this year turned down upwards of £1 1/2m worth of subcontract work for a major builder as they have no interest in the end user/homeowner and are only interested in how fast they can throw them up and how much the balance sheet shows. One MP got it right by saying these companies are only interested in feeding the faces of their directors. I have no interest in becoming a part of a world in action tv prog. because profit is seen as the most important thing above all else.
well said. I do talk to the subcontractors and they say the same. the reports in the press are not made up, there are a lot of folks out there who have bought very expensive so called high spec homes only to discover serious issues after they move in. in theory they are covered by the developer but remember they are a finance company and don't want to spend money to eat into their profits and bonuses. The NHBC guarantee is limited and conditional and reduced where homes were built on landfill. and the NHBC is not independent but funded by the developers, well who would have guessed that. The old landfill site is on a slope and piling was done prior to foundations, but I found out the developers did not do 5 detached homes to save costs. Two years ago another of the big name developers built executive high spec homes on another site and soon after selling them reports were coming out of serious faults with several homes having collapsed staircases and more, some of those houses cost £1 million, so price does not guarantee quality. They were chucked up same as the cheaper ones.
Four months ago we had to change a flight of stairs that snapped 1 week after fitting (stair string faulty). A site we where supposed to be working on but pulled away from- 3 days after moving in a family found out the drains where not connected. They got a fully tiled kitchen and bathroom as compo. The same site houses are going from pre- plaster to moving in dates 2 weeks after. This all from a company that has taken over most of Carillion's government contracts.
Seriously your local MP is either plain stupid or so in the pocket of someone he/she is unwilling to speak the truth about the whole picture. Pretty much everyone's pension fund is linked to the stock market....and many hedge funds are indeed linked to bricks and mortar. Your average house developer quite possibly pays high wages and bonuses to directors....that's to ensure their share values and dividends keep producing for your and everyone else's pension fund. We are all part of the problem, unless of course you manage your own pension fund and hand pick your investments....if you do so based on ethical grounds alone pray the body shop stays afloat else it's s poor old age.
Need to look at commissioning management, certification and defects management. It's largely a tick box exercise now, conducted by so called professionals that don't know if the data in front of them is correct or not.
Over 100 defects after moving in and setting on a company to do the defects list isn't a good idea tho'.