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The Shocking Truth About New-Build Homes

Many new homes are riddled with defects—and buyers are in for a shock if they want them fixed

By David Hurst

Margaret and John Lambe were looking forward to retiring. They’d worked hard running an electronics company and were moving to the small market town of Calne in Wiltshire to be nearer their family. They paid £250,000 for a brand-new four-bedroom detached house in pleasant Avon Close and were planning on making the most of the garden. The house itself came ready decorated by the developer, Persimmon Homes, and fitted with all appliances. Friends joked that all they’d have to do would be to put the curtains up.

But a fortnight before the comple-tion date their home was like a bombsite. The bathroom had been plumbed wrongly, flooding the utility room and kitchen below. Worse, the “garden” was now a churned dumping ground for bricks, slabs and wire. By the time they moved in, in March 2002, the bathroom had been replumbed—but the new flooring in the rooms below had been laid before the rooms had dried out and within weeks it had lifted.

It was a sign of things to come. From badly fixed door handles to the bath’s having to be refitted, the couple’s new home has had more than 100 defects, which have taken three and a half years for Persimmon to fix.

The Lambes’ experience is far from unique. A buyer (who does not want to be identified due to a pending legal case) from another developer found, among dozens of problems, incorrect wiring, locks that didn’t fit, leaking gutters and drains that flowed the wrong way—causing a stench outside so bad that he could never open his windows.

Of course most new buildings need some fixes—known as “snags” in the industry. But Steve Soulsby, 35, an electrician himself, was astonished by the shoddiness of his new-build in east Scotland, another Persimmon home. “Among other things, the window sills were covered in mortar, the garage roof wasn’t properly fixed to the walls, windows were scratched, a bedroom door didn’t shut, nails were sticking out of a door frame and tiles were not sealed in the shower area. Yet it was a month after I gave them the snagging list before they even started.”

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