New Builds, Poor Standards!

Shilpa Mathuradas

Allegations of Poor Standards and Customer Care in New Builds

A Dispatches programme in 2019 examined allegations of shoddy standards, poor customer care and excessive profits from one of Britain’s biggest builders.

It is no secret that new build homes are quickly gaining a reputation for being poorly built, resulting in significant stress to buyers who buy these homes with the risk that many of them will not recover the sum they paid for them.

Help to Buy: How the Scheme Worked

The Help to Buy equity loan scheme gave first-time buyers with small deposits an opportunity to buy a “new build” home. Under the scheme, buyers could borrow 20% of the purchase price interest-free for the first five years as long as they had at least a 5% deposit, or up to 40% in London. The scheme closed to new applications on 31 October 2022, and the final cut-off for completions was 31 May 2023.

New builds popular amongst first-time buyers

The scheme made new build homes very popular amongst first-time buyers, namely, those with the least experience buying a property. As a result, large developers did very well out of the scheme. Buyers have, however, complained about the quality of these new builds, the fact that they had been forced to complete when the property was not even ready and threatened with financial penalties and court action if they refused to complete.

In many cases, the buyers could not obtain their own surveys before purchasing the property, and the developers controlled the whole process. After completion, properties were found not to meet basic standards. In one case, the property did not have the required fire barriers.

With the government facing a housing shortfall, the quality of new build homes will remain an ongoing debate. The Building Safety Act 2022 provides for a statutory New Homes Ombudsman scheme, which shows that the government recognises this is a significant problem.

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