Quality of new build houses
 

Has anyone seen the quality of new build houses that seem to spring up all over the place and be built within a matter of weeks?


The quality is shocking and there seems to be lots of bad work being signed off.


We've got a new estate that has been built near us and all the houses look the same, no character to them, and look like they are made of cardboard.


Plenty of people complaining of damp around their skirting boards.....These houses were built on fields that had natural water drainage and streams. Great idea!


See these videos here where a company goes in and highlights all the dangerous bad workmanship:


https://www.youtube.com/@newhomequalitycontrol4803




The only thing new builds seem to offer is better insulation.
As someone who has lived in a new build, I would definately not buy one again and am now glad to be out of them.




What do you think?

Re: Quality of new build houses
 

There is a guy on tictok goes and reviews some and as you say they are terrible. Like not a plumb wall in the building, fake air plugs, bad snagging literally all round, terrible

Re: Quality of new build houses
 

I think given the number of different companies building homes in the UK is so great that you aren’t just generalising, you are generalising beyond the point of absurdity.

I’m living in a new build, on an estate that’s still being built. My neighbours have been moved in anything from 4 to 18 months (we’ve been in for 7 months now). As it’s a shared site the local facebook group includes discussion of house types erected by two different builders.

Sure there are snagging issues. After a while you can spot which builder they’re talking about by the issue they bring up. And one of them is definitely better than the other (I’m in the better half of the estate thankfully). In our house all the snags have involved internal doors that have needed minor adjustments so they fasten shut and/or don’t catch on the door frame. They’ve been addressed quickly and without fuss, first by a joiner and then by a decorator repainting where a badly fitting door has damaged paintwork even slightly.

On our street there are at least 4 (possibly 6) different house types mixed to prevent uniformity. They are all stepped forwards and backwards from the street to further break up the line. Although I should add that if you walk down any street built between the wars you will see endless semi-detached houses that are near identical even though they were often only built a half dozen at a time by lots of different independent builders, and all in long, straight lines. And you can see similar in any Victorian terrace or 1950s council estate. Uniform looking new build developments are hardly a new thing.

In Scotland at least, most new homes are constructed as timber kit, so the inner frame is wood rather than the aerated blocks that were common from the latter 20th century onwards. This probably contributes to the apparent speed of construction, and on our estate at least they use a method of assembling the entire roof frame on the ground before craning it in place. I reckon that this speeds the process up but visually gives the illusion of it being faster still.

I’m wondering though, why you think rapid construction is a bad thing per se?

Re: Quality of new build houses
 

It sunds like you've got a good house builder and have had your snags dealt with in appropritate time. Many are still waiting.
I do agree with you that there are many house building companies and not all of them are the same. I have seen some houses that look a lot better. In fact just down the road where another housing estate is located the houses look a lot nicer to look at.


The thing I see on an estate near me is also the fact that house gardens seems to touch another persons garage or wall. Lots of shared driveways and very close together. Houses seem to be a lot smaller. I viewed a three bedroom recently and the 3rd bedroom struggled to even get a single bed in to it.
And then the gardens are all overlooking each other. The traditional feel of private gardens seems to no longer exist.


I don't see rapid construction as a problem if done properly but from what I've seen there seems to be a lot of bodge jobs or pressure to get houses signed off and therfore mistakes happening with bad construction work.

Re: Quality of new build houses
 

Rooms are a lot smaller than they used to be too. I don't think our furniture would fit.

Re: Quality of new build houses
 

Not sure how it is down south but the latest Scottish building regs compel builders to make their ground floors fully wheelchair accessible. That has very much put an end to the trend of ever-smaller spaces. When we were given access to the floor plans for our new place you could see where the draughtsman had drawn circles to prove the various spaces were large enough for a chair to about-turn in them. And the downstairs toilet/cloakroom is large enough to convert into a wet room if need be.

Re: Quality of new build houses
 

That is great to hear and good of Scotland to be enforcing this.
Would be good if this was everywhere.

Re: Quality of new build houses
 

A few years ago they threw up some timber framed builds near me and for the whole Autumn the untreated (to the casual observer) framing was open to the elements and boy was it wet. Then they sealed it all up and there's brick cladding to disguise the construction. God knows how the rot is doing inside those walls.

I remember a Tommy Walsh program where they opened up some timber framing that was only 12 years old and the main structural members had rotted half way through.

Re: Quality of new build houses
 

If it was that bad after 12 years it would certainly have been claimable against the NHBC warranty within its 10 years.

Re: Quality of new build houses
 

Not sure how good the new builds being built on the outskirts of our city are like but one would hope they are of a better quality then many of the ones being built in the inner city places in our city as the rooms are small and there have been many complaints of dampness in some of the new builds.

Re: Quality of new build houses
 

Damp problems are usually the result of people not heating them enough, keeping the night vents on the double glazing units closed, or interfering with the operation of extractor fans (reducing the run-on time in the bathroom, or even worse, shutting it off at its isolator to save electricity). The latest building regs make new build houses extremely draughtproof and thermally efficient but the result is if you live in one and neither ventilate nor heat it adequately the human body’s natural tendency to shed moisture will raise the humidity to the point where it becomes problematic.

We found there was a temptation to shut all the night vents when winter first hit, just to eliminate all possible sourced of cold air, but the humidity indoors began to climb. We now keep two vents open in the kitchen diner and this is adequate in our house, because there are always-on extractor fans in the bathrooms, the kitchen and the utility room, so air is always flowing through.