New Home Owners And Snagging Forum
Advice on buying a brand new home => General discussion => Topic started by: madmaxwell on February 07, 2017, 02:42:37 pm
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My partner has recently bought a property built in 2006.
She did not buy it from new but second-hand.
It appears to me that the property could not seriously pass any sound insulation tests as you can clearly hear speech, coughing and the TV between rooms.
Her daughter's room is also much colder than other rooms and after doing some research on the quality of new builds I believe her room has not been insulated nor that the property can possibly conform to the required noise insulation requirements.
Is there anything she can do ?
If she gets tests done which prove my concerns can the housebuilders be made to do anything after over 10 years.
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As you have discovered, your old new home has not been built to the standards required.
Firstly, there are no requirements for sound insulation between rooms in the same dwelling, other than to a bathroom or cloakroom.
Regarding the cold room, this should have been picked up by the original buyer and reported to the housebuilder and/or warranty provider.
After ten years, particularly as a second buyer, you have no recourse to either the original housebuilder or the warranty provider. You could try writing to them but I doubt very much you would be successful.
Buying second-hand homes, buyers should have a full structural survey.
Then if the surveyor misses anything you can then sue him for negligence.
Any surveyor worth his salt would carry out a thermnal imaging survey on any home built in the last 15 years, as time after time housebuilders have been caught out, having not installed insulation at all or it is only partly installed.