Life in a New Build Home

 Much is made in the media that we’re ‘not building enough houses’. Politicians like saying they will build more. The problem with this approach - like with HGV drivers - is that there is a finite pool of competent resources with which to plan and build those homes (or drive those lorries). If you try to speed things up by allocating more resources you risk bringing in less competent individuals, reducing the quality of your final product (houses, or HGVs on the roads of the UK).

I’ve lived in a new-build home for the last eight and a half years. It was built by Martin Grant Homes, a small builder who - according to its website - tries to focus on ‘quality and attention to detail’. If other builders are worse at attention to detail we are already building millions of substandard homes; building more, more quickly, will only make matters worse.

I thought it might be helpful to record a TripAdvisor-type of review of my home and a customer’s view of Martin Grant Homes. So here it is.

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Martin Grant Homes: Prepare to be disappointed!

We bought a new build house from Martin Grant Homes in May 2013. Like many purchasers, we thought we would be getting a property that would be 100% compliant with building regs, on a development that would meet all the needs of local people and the standards of the local authority. 

Eight years down the line, I can fairly say that I am disappointed with Martin Grant Homes. I have been able to cope with many of the problems, but, quite frankly, those problems should never have arisen in the first place.

There are two separate things you need to consider on a new build house: the property itself, and the estate roads and infrastructure around it, which the developer is also developing at the same time. 

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Our property

• On the day we first entered our new home, it was glaringly obvious that there had been no checks for defects by Martin Grant Homes before they handed it over. The light switch at the bottom of the stairs - that should have operated the landing light - operated the bathroom one instead. There being no window in the bathroom, and most people tending to do what they do in there with the door closed, this had the interesting effect of plunging a loo user into total darkness!  

• There was no light over the stairs, nor a window. Neither was there an easy-to-use handrail - the banister, such as it was, was high, in the inside of the tight U-curve of the stairs. After one slip on the stairs, and a consequent visit to the osteopath, we got a sparks in to fit a light over the stairs, and a DIY man to fit a handrail round the outside of the stairs. (Those omissions were rather odd in the light of the house being supposedly ‘disabled friendly’ - we later found out that the downstairs was fully accessible by wheelchair, internally).

• Following on from that point, the downstairs was fully accessible by wheelchair. But there was a four inch step to enter the house at the front door, and a seven inch one at the back. There was, however, a lovely ramp up to the side door of the garage, wide enough for a wheelchair - and a seven inch threshold at the door there!

• Most of the fittings in the house were of low quality (our neighbours even renewed their kitchen and carpets - supplied by MGH - within two years; we were glad we had gone for an upgraded kitchen, and got our own carpets). The cisterns in the loos developed leaks at the flush valve after a couple of years, we weren’t given any guidance on how to replace them. Initially we shelled out £200 for a plumber to come and do them, and that plumber has been kept busy around the estate. I found out I could buy the washers on the internet for a couple of quid and now replace them myself, but I can’t help wondering whether MGH were in league with the local plumbing fraternity! 

• Similarly, the gas boiler provided by MGH was the cheapest one they could get hold of. We had leaks from it (due to them not fitting a pressure control valve) and we weren’t the only ones on the estate to find our boiler had the habit of going out in strong winds. Some neighbours had replaced theirs within five years of moving in.

• We had a bit of work done on the roof and found that many of the slates had been fitted with just one nail (there should have been two). We were lucky, for they were aluminium nails; one neighbour had to have his whole roof re-done when he found out his roofer had used steel nails.

• Upon completion we were told not to go into the attic, because to do so would void our NHBC guarantee. Two years to the day I went up and found some of the reasons why they hadn’t wanted me to go up there: there was missing insulation over our en-suite (we had complained about it being cold but were told that was to be expected); the ducting for the ventilation system was of flexible aluminium hose, and laid across the joists, when it should have been insulated rigid plastic, fixed in straight lines, and fastened overhead to allow for movement and storage in the roof space; and I have found one part of the inner house wall where I could move the breeze blocks around - the mortar wasn’t holding them in place (they moved when I tried to drill them!).

• The missing insulation was over a section of the ceiling where the paint hadn’t taken. What had clearly happened was that they finished the house in a hurry; they didn’t leave the plaster long enough to dry, and where the insulation was missing they just painted over damp plaster, which meant the paint later blistered and fell off. (The heating was up full on the day of completion, indicating they were drying things out)

• We had problems with water ingress over a window; eventually it turned out to be just missing silicone, taking a man with a gun and a ladder no more than ten minutes to fix. I must have sent a dozen emails to get them to come and fix that, it would have been quicker just to send round the man who fixed things, rather than employ the legions they must surely have fobbing people off with excuses.

• We weren’t provided with a drawing showing the routing of plumbing or electrics. When we wanted to turn off our outside tap for the winter we had to get a man in, it took him 20 minutes to find the shut-off valve.

• When we moved in we wanted to change the electricity supplier. This took over six months, because MGH had failed to correctly record the meter numbers for various properties, including ours - Scottish Power had our meter as being on an industrial site. 

• We have a wall in our garden: it was built with no damp course at the top. I’ve capped it off, but if left, within maybe fifteen years the mortar would have all fallen apart and the wall would have needed rebuilding. PVC damp course for the perhaps twenty foot long wall would have cost less than a tenner.

• Our neighbours share a drive with us. It’s 6 metres wide, but on their side a chimney breast sticks out by a couple of feet. This means that they, or their visitors, are inclined to park a little off centre, crowding what is our side. Other properties have a more serious problem: their garages are not wide enough to take their cars (typically, 4x4s).

The development  

The local authority has refused to adopt the roads on our development, because it does not comply with its (or any sensible) standards. Among the issues I have complained of to both MGH and council are:

• There is one road that has no footpaths - people have to walk in the road. (This was done to provide a grass verge, making pedestrians less likely to walk close to the properties along there, and giving the illusion that they have larger front gardens than they actually do). This road has cobbled traffic calmers. If you push a wheelchair or pram over them - as you have to ‘cos there ain’t a footpath - it jiggles up and down, and can even get stuck in the grooves. Any sleeping baby in the pram gets woken. Who on earth thought up that?!

• That road, and a number of others, are 4.8 metres wide. Our local Fire & Rescue service says it needs 3.1 metres to get a fire engine in. A Ford Fiesta is just over 1.7m wide, a Transit just over 2 metres - so you would expect there to be parking restrictions, wouldn’t you? No. The developer will not implement restrictions, I have been told. The council is arguing with them over this one at the time of writing, we’re being careful with the candles and paper chains at birthday parties pending a resolution.

• That road with the grass verges also gives rise to another problem. There are people who consider it is acceptable to let their dog poo around the estate, and, of course, to them it is more acceptable said poo ends up on grass rather than tarmac. There’s one point where it is almost essential to cross the grass verge, going from one road to another, and guess where there was a dog poo recently? Yes, right where you’d want to tread. There’s no joined-up network of tarmac paths around the estate; it's clear the details of each phase were worked out independently, with no attention by either developer or council planner as to what the end result would be. 

• At least one house owner has taken over the grass verge in front of their property and uses it as part of their front garden; they also park over what is meant to be the footpath, protecting this extension to their garden. Complaints about this to both developer and council have been a waste of time: ‘it’s a civil matter between you and your neighbour’ was what the council told me.

• Many of the roads on the developments are ‘shared spaces’ - meaning they can be narrower than ordinary roads. The problem is, many drivers don’t understand that shared spaces are, in fact, pavements along which vehicles can pass but are not supposed to park (except in marked spaces), and MGH made matters worse by not having the same strength foundations under the edges of the road as in the middle - so vehicles, even heavy lorries, have driven over the edge of the shared space and the surface has sunk as a result. 

• A number of the roads are surfaced with block paving. In places the blocks have worked very loose, or sunk, leaving an inch or more step, just enough for a pedestrian to trip on.

• Some houses on shared spaces have no pavement or garden in front of them, in effect their front doors open out directly onto a road. A child, or pet, could easily end up under a passing bin lorry.

• A couple of hundred yards from us is a square where a number of office and retail units were built. I know of a number of potential tenants for these units who made enquiries, only to be told the rents for them which were very high. MGH then managed to convince the local authority that it could not let out all of the units and managed to get planning permission to convert some of them to residential use. We don’t have a ladies hairdresser, pharmacy, stationer, phone shop, solicitor, accountant, post office, dentist, physiotherapist or for that matter a CAB in that square, and there’s now only one unit left. When Welwyn Garden City was built, the developers were responsible for opening all of the retail units they built; MGH is clearly not of that calibre.

• Over the road from our house is a grassed area which was laid out in line with plans for sports fields. It was laid out using heavy clay soil that was, I suspect, subsoil from elsewhere on the development. Grass has not grown well on it; the border beech hedging has grown patchily, much of it dying because of the poor quality soil, even though the plans promised special compost and nutrients.

• I’ve lost count of the number of power cuts we’ve had since we moved in. 

• There is a path running from the development into outer areas of the town, towards the centre shops, banks, etc. This path is edged with nettles, brambles and suchlike, I have had to nag MGH to get them cut back. It is also quite a neglected area and therefore frequently used by the locals for fly-tipping.

• The original prospectus for the estate promised a ‘porous’ design whereby there would be no cul-de-sacs for pedestrians - every road would, for foot users, lead to another. Some residents don’t like having people walking past their properties so have put up fences where originally there were just bollards; the original vision of a development where residents didn’t need cars, but would cycle or walk everywhere, has quickly been forgotten. 

• The estate was designed with no road access to the town centre - to reach the town centre shops by car you have to drive along a bypass to the edge of town, and then back in. Most people don’t, they go to another town where there are better shops. It's not surprising that the town centre is failing; also, the lack of connectivity between ‘old town’ and ‘new town’ may well have led, in part, to the problems letting the retail and office units.

•  Similarly, there is no road or even a footpath connection to a small shopping centre and sports centre just a couple of hundred yards away from the development; the official route involves a half mile detour, although there is a well worn mud track over a grassed area and through the line of a hedge, showing the demand for such a link.

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In conclusion, if you are thinking of buying a new build home, especially from Martin Grant Homes, I would strongly suggest you do the following:

• Get clear, written assurances from the developer regarding the compliance of the estate roads with the highway authorities stands for adoption;

• Obtain copies of all the relevant planning documents from the developer or local authority, and, after purchase, zealously follow up breaches by the developer or other residents

• After purchase, engage the services of a competent surveyor to assess the quality of the build of your property and note down any defects or Building Regulation compliance issues. Do this well before the second anniversary of completion, and hand the list over to the developer, and ask for a plan for the resolution of all issues;

• Keep records of all complaints about faults etc; any you complain about within the first two years are covered by the NHBC, even if they aren’t fixed in that time.

By the way, in my case the council was Central Bedfordshire. If you ever find yourself interviewing a former employee of their planning department for any kind of job that might involve a modicum of common sense, you have been warned!