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More than 185,000 new homes are built every year in Britain. Their attractions are heavily promoted by developers: no chain, no redecorating, repairs or renovation, state-of-the-art energy efficiency and all mod cons ready fitted. But buyers are increasingly finding that their dream homes are not up to specification—and may even contravene building and safety standards. In fact a 2003 Housing Forum survey found that fully 54 per cent of new-build buyers would not recommend their builder.
“The number of snags we find in new homes is increasing year on year,” says Martyn Maxwell, managing partner in Brickkickers New Home Inspections, an independent company. “You can now expect to find at least 40 problems in a one-bedroom property and over 130 for a four-bedroom house.”
Phil Waller of www.brand-new homes.co.uk, a website for new-build buyers, sees a number of reasons why standards are dropping. “Developers are setting unrealistic schedules to complete estates,” he says. “Accelerated building programmes then mean there’s a shortage of skilled workers and experienced site managers. And there are not enough inspectors.” National House-Building Council (NHBC) inspectors no longer make spot checks and come only when invited by builders at six key stages—and these inspections are sometimes missed.
Terry Williams, who conducted a survey into snagging in new housing in 2005–6 at Coventry University’s School of Engineering and Computing, believes a major cause of the problem is official pressure to ease the country’s housing crisis. “The Government has given the industry a target of increasing output [now to 240,000 homes a year] while reducing prices. With any successful product there’s a balance between cost, quality and quantity—but an unchecked focus on only two of these will inevitably de-prioritise the third.”
But many new-home buyers—even those buying “off-plan”, before the house has even been built—are reassured by the ten-year warranties that must be in place on all new homes to get a mortgage. These warranties are paid for by the builder and traditionally issued by the NHBC under their “Buildmark” scheme, although Zurich’s “Building Guarantee” and Premier’s “Guarantee for New Homes” are available alternatives.
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