It’s been a busy week, and what with the heatwave and all, sat in front of a computer updating the blog hasn’t been right at the top of my priorities. But it’s Sunday evening, the children are asleep, and there’s a gin and tonic to hand, so it seems as good a time as any to update things around here.

Solicitor delays

A chunk of the delay to exchange over the last 10 days has been down to Pictons being very slow. To the point where Crest Nicholson’s solicitors have been forwarding queries direct to me instead of passing them through the solicitors.

When I go to check these out it turns out that Pictons have had some of these queries (and it’s basic stuff like “Planning permission for an extension was obtained. Was an extension built?” that I can answer in minutes) since the beginning of June and haven’t passed them on to.

My mind is well and truly boggled.

Inspection report issues

I’ve also been going back and forth with Crest Nicholson about some of the issues that came up in the New Build Inspections (NBI) report. After some back and forth they’ve agreed that (amongst other things) yes, the manholes in the garden do need to be screwed down so the children can’t lift them up and fall in. And that (contrary to their earlier comments) this is an NHBC requirement that they’ve failed to follow.

But that’s not the half of it.

As mentioned back on 15th June, Crest Nicholson agreed to carry out the necessary work by the 24th June.

That was last Friday, so last Saturday I got the keys to the property from the estate agents and headed off down there armed with a copy of the inspection report.

To cut a long story short I only bothered to check the ground floor. Because of the 50 or so defects that NBI had identified on the ground floor, almost half of them (that Crest had agreed, in writing, to put right by the 24th) have not been put right. And have obviously not been put right. And these aren’t the sort of thing where there might be scope for a difference of opinion as to whether or not they’ve been done.

For example, if you’ve been following along you’ll remember this photo:

showing paint on the edge of the worktop in the kitchen. Trivial for them to put right, and it’s still not been done.

This didn’t leave me in the best frame of mind, so on Monday morning the Crest Nicholson sales manager dealing with this purchase is going to discover a lengthy e-mail from me in her Inbox. In it I’ve said that although I’ve got everything ready to Exchange at my end, we’re not going to be doing that until I’ve met the build manager (and, ideally, her) at the site and pointed out every issue to them. And then extracted from them a firm commitment to rectify them (with completion dependent on this).

I suspect that they don’t get to deal with informed customers terribly often, so this should be a nice surprise to them.

Contracts and coincidences

Pictons did manage to get a second set of contract paperwork to me this week. Actually, that’s not strictly true, as I had to go down to their office to collect it. This is another inch thick or so pile of documentation that I’ve been going through. That took a few evenings this week.

No nasty surprises so far, but it did throw up an interesting date coincidence — my birthday’s 28th November. My girlfriend moved in to her current place on the 28th November. Crest signed the paperwork to buy the land they’ve built on the 28th November. Hmm.

Postcode

Oh, and one more thing — a tip for anyone buying a new build. You’d be surprised how many people won’t have heard of the postcode.

This is quite important when trying to organise things like home insurance, and the insurer has problems quoting because they don’t recognise the postcode.

It’s the little things you don’t think of that come to bite you.

Anyway, that’s it for the moment. I’m looking forward to blogging notes from tomorrow’s conversations with Crest Nicholson…