I suppose, as it is for most engaged couples another weekend in paradise and another wedding fayre Mr Warehouse and I are off to! What with having to call out breakdown yet again for no less than a third time in less than six weeks for my little Vivienne who was unable to start because of battery troubles and Mr warehouse encountering at very much a similar scenario with his motorbike stuck on a building site, outside our new home in the middle of the Bedfordshire countryside for nearly five hours as he awaited to be recovered back home we were certainly ready to have a relaxing couple of days off. After the week me and my Fiance (still love saying that) have endured we were more than excited to wander round wedding fayres at overly priced venues, sipping champagne to pass our time despite the miserable weather outside.
Although I came crashing down to reality this morning when I received a phone call from the housing association. Answering I heard a familiar although melancholy voice on the other end of the line. Over the last few months the house had slowly ground to a halt in terms of any updates. After jumping through several hoops and bending over backwards in order to get our Mortgage Offer back in July of this year, Mr Warehouse and I was told that our initial handover date when the builders would have fully completed the property, inside and out, ready to hand over to the housing association that we were purchasing half of the property with would be mid-August. With this in mind we hoped that we would have a completion date and moving in prior to Mr Warehouse's birthday, plenty of time to move our stuff in and get settled with even a few moments to steal in our new garden before the sun eventually made its departure for the winter. Handover Date Move Number One! I was told that it would be another couple of weeks or so and with that Mr Warehouse and I prepared for a move around or even on the Bank Holiday Weekend in August!
However after hearing nothing and following the long weekend off, I spoke to the gentleman who had initially sold us our new home but sadly he did not have the news that we were hoping for and that the properties had not been handed over. Handover Date Move Number Two! In fact, what had happened that morning was a rather important and integral meeting between the builders and developers of the plots and the housing association. The local housing association had basically said that they were not happy with the standard of homes they were being given and that given the amount of snagging that needed to be done it may be some time before they would accept any sort of property from the builders and developers. Unfortunately the estate agents were not privy as to what the snagging was or how long it could potentially be. The reality was that it was all internal and nothing structurally was wrong with the build, theoretically meaning that the snagging could simply be down to the fact that the paint job isn't done to a high enough standard or that a screw isn't screwed in properly to a door handle.
I asked for a new handover date so our little family could try and calculate a rough idea of a completion / exchange date and therefore a move date so we could organise things like TV, broadband and get some quotes or book a removal company for the big day. Again, I was told that it would be about a week and with that crap news returned to my desk and emailed the Boyf the bad news and although Mr. Warehouse and I had a few things planned on the run up to my birthday weekend we were still looking forward to moving into our new home shortly.
However as we neared our third provisional handover date from the builders and developers to the housing association I had another phone call. Handover Date Move Number Three! It was at this point I nearly dropped the milk as the new handover date was being pushed until the end of December 2018. Frustrated and angry I had to keep calm and remember that I was in a lucky position that I would be one day able to afford my own place of safety, tranquillity and warmth; something that many people across the globe even tonight will not have.
As the next few days passed in a blur of meetings, I had a frantic phone call from Mr Warehouse asking if I had seen the most recent email from the housing association. I had not. On opening up my emails I could see what he was so upset and angry about. Handover Date Move Number Six! With less than 48 hours to go until we were expecting handover to take place, I was now reading an email that stated this would not be the case. Our new handover date? Over a fortnight away on Friday 19th of October 2018. Fuming and almost on the brink of losing my rag with everyone involved in our house buying process I called my contact at the housing association and asked her what gives. She basically told me in not so many words what I was reading between the lines of her email to me and the other future-neighbours on the street in that the list of snagging issues that had been brought to the attention of the builders had not actioned appropriately. Nothing more to say or do I ended the phone call and informed Mr Warehouse to keep him in the loop.
With the whirlwind of family dramas, wedding planning and my mounting workload I was looking forward to potentially having a week off to move into our new home, although cutting it fine for the spooky season of Halloween and "Trick-Or-Treat-ers". Only this morning I answered a phone call I had been hoping wouldn't come. Handover Date Move Number Seven! As with the last times the postponing was as a result of poor quality of work, although this time my Housing Association contact was not so coy with her responses. She blatantly admitted that the list of snagging given to the builder the last time over two-weeks ago had not been done at all and now we were to be expecting a provisional new Handover of 31st October 2018. But wait - There was more ...
Continuing our conversation I could sense that the person on the other end of the phone line was nervous and anxious about something. It was then that she dropped the bombshell! Turns out that the floor plans that we were initially shown at the point of sale with the building specifications and dimensions were wrong. And not by a little either. The plan that my Fiance and I were sold was that upstairs on the first floor following on from the stairs positioned on the right-hand side of the property, we were expecting to have the main bathroom right in front of us with a large privacy window so as to allow for natural light, followed by the two double bedrooms to the front and the back of the property. Although this had changed from our initial plans and now will be the main bathroom sandwiched between the two double bedrooms and will not include a privacy window potentially making it dark and unnaturally lit.
On the ground floor as you come in the front door you would be greeted by the staircase on your right hand side as before. To your left would be the kitchen in a horse shoe shape with the door facing the oven on the exact opposite wall. Next door on the left hand side would be the downstairs bathroom which would include a privacy window facing out to our driveway. Entering through the door at the other end of the hallway to the front door would be rectangular Lounge/Diner, stretching the length of the property and leading out into our large garden through a patio door which would also have an adjacent window. Whilst the layout of the ground floor still contains the staircase on your right hand side and the same horse shoe shaped kitchen with the door facing the oven on the exact opposite wall, the downstairs bathroom was now to be positioned under the stairs on the right rather than the left meaning that a privacy window would not exist. Continuing through the door at the other end of the hallway to the front door would be a now "L-shaped" Lounge/Diner, stretching the length of the property and eating into the area where the downstairs bathroom was supposed to be.
Shocked and Gobsmacked I asked about the reasons why this had happened and how out had only been now, several months down the line into buying our first time that we were finding these details out. Furious I was ready to call the builders and rip them a new arsehole. That was until my Housing Association contact explained that in actual fact the floor plans, initial dimensions and specifications for the house had changed in the very early days of the build process. The house builders and developers themselves had actually been very upfront with their decisions and had explained fully to the housing association the builders change in plans and layout. Unfortunately it would have appeared that this information was not passed through to the sales people within the housing association itself and that our property and our Semi'd neighbour were sold the properties on the basis of the homes being a completely different layout to what they were being built as.
Taking it all in I ended the phone call and called Mr Warehouse immediately to try and discuss our options. The contact at the housing association of was sincerely apologetic for the fact that there had been a huge fuck up and had explained that because of all of this that we would be well within our right to withdraw from our contract to buy going on to state that the responsibility would also live with the housing association in order to make payments to our solicitors, mortgage lender and mortgage broker, reimbursing us totally for our cost and making us at ground zero again.
The other option we have is to suck it up and live with it, literally. The fact of the matter was that Mr Warehouse and I were already highly committed to this purchase and with such a huge investment of most if not every penny of our savings we will have not much choice. Obviously in a way it is nice to see a housing association company as large as this one looking out its future customers, making sure that the homes are up to scratch and safe (even if it is on selfish terms as if anything was to go wrong we would be calling up the housing association to come and put it right rather than the builders or developers) but quite frankly selling us a house that was completely built not in the specified way we were told it would be is not on.
And there I was saying that buying a house was not stressful at all. Where we go from here I don't know but one thing is for certain and that is that me and Mr Warehouse will need to view the property in person before we make any snap decisions.
'Til next time, Love A.Lou xx
