New Home Owners And Snagging Forum
Advice on buying a brand new home => NHBC Warranty => Topic started by: dr_tarn on November 29, 2018, 07:09:21 pm
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Any thoughts would be greatly welcomed. As a quick summary:
- Purchased new home in January and immediately found well over 150 defects
- Raised this with home builder and they advised site team would sort out.
- Little progress and poor quality of what they did do. Raised to area manager.
- Same result, raised to group director, letter advising would seek to resolve in two weeks.
- Another team arrived, did more damage than they fixed, Little progress and unearthed unsafe
electrics and lack of proper fire certification.
- Stopped builder access and raised with NHBC. No return calls, complaint upheld.
- Resolution meeting held with outcome of around 40 non-conformances. Builder did not act through
enforcement period.
- NHBC did not respond again, 2nd complaint elicited no active response, claiming would need to have a
second inspection at the property. Builder showed commitment by agreeing to a 2nd visit and there
are no actual timescales in the NHBC policy.
- NHBC advised do not deal with building regulations, i.e. electrics and fire certificates, so also on
second complaint with East Devon Council building control currently.
- Recovered some funds, under small claims court route in relation to extras, but outstanding issues
could be up to £10,000 -£20,000.
- Dedicated review website purchased ready to publish experience and considering next, potential legal
steps.
- Deadlock, with NHBC demanding they do a second inspection as tradespeople had visited property in
the interim, although clearly for other unrelated issues.
Complete fiasco, with potential options
1. Publish with unflattering content, we believe this yielded little for another victim.
2. Go to financial ombudsman and chip away through small claims.
3. Engage lawyers to progress and stop NHBC and potential ombudsman route.
Any thoughts would be very gratefully received?
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Who is this cowboy builder?
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First of all name the housebuilder! It acts as a warning to others.
This is exactly why the statutory New Homes Ombudsman is required.
Write to James Brokenshire with your experience suggesting he gets on with setting it up!
james.brokenshire@communities.gsi.gov.uk
Going public and using a website to show the world how bad this housebuilder is certainly will not harm your case! As I always say, "The squeaky wheel gets the oil"
I'd forget about using the Financial Ombudsman Services for a complaint against the NHBC. For a start, they don't adjudicate on the first tow years anyway. Thereafter new homebuyers only succeed around 42% of cases (from memory). Worse the F)S will take the long end of a year to reach a decision!
Unless you have legal expenses insurance (often an add-on with a home insurance) I'd forget about any legal action apart from the small claims court. I know of one litigator against housebuilders that charges homebuyers £370 plus vat an hour!