How to buy a brand new house

From Oxted to Ormskirk, the response from our new homes colleagues when asked how to choose a new build home, was the same: Who is the developer?

Louisa Hooper of the Land & New Homes team at Exeter explained: “Everything about a new house – position, choice of craftsmen, after-sales service – they are all determined by the developer. If that company has a strong record – and some of ours have a genuine following – you can have confidence in promises made about quality of finishes, timing and more.”

By ‘following’, Louisa says she means just that: some buyers are so impressed with their new home that, when changing needs prompt them to move, they actively seek out houses built by the same developer. So if your first step should be checking that a developer is one you can trust, the question which naturally follows is: how do you verify?

Verification is the stuff of guarantees and standards. You should ask which apply to any new house you are considering. All mortgageable new homes have a ten year guarantee from the NHBC, LABC etc. Since 2010, many developers have also signed up to the Consumer Code for Home Builders.

In the mainstream market, this has raised quality and service standards considerably. Every year, the Home Builders Federation asks new home buyers, if they would recommend their builder to a friend. Following the introduction of the Code, the ‘Yes’ rate climbed persistently, reaching 90% in 2020.

Last year, that number jumped again to 94%. Much of this was attributed to the impact of a new standard, the New Homes Quality Code (NHQC), widely adopted from October 2022. Wendy Owen of our Lancashire office in Ormskirk, was with a large housebuilder at the time. “It turned our world upside down for while” she says, “but I am a fan. It was long overdue.”

In essence, Wendy says, the NHQC imposes good systems and ways of working, that the best developers practise anyway. As a result, they are the ones who have proved most reluctant to sign up to the NHQC and its extra costs. “So NHQC is not the most important thing” says Wendy, “but the further down the price scale and into the mainstream you are looking, the more important it gets”.

Finally, our New Homes colleagues recommend checking out opportunities for ‘the fun stuff’. One of the many attractions of opting for new build, especially at the higher end and where the house has not yet been started, is being able to choose your preferred styles and colours of aspects such as flooring, wallcoverings, kitchens and bathrooms. One thing, they say, that makes walking into a beautiful, all-functioning brand new house, built for you, even better, is when it has been tailored according to your wishes.