[samy]

My in-laws completed on a GW town house in London last Friday..

The completion day was agreed well in advance, and they were reassured repeatedly that there would be no problems with the date. They were supposed to be invited to a inspection of the site two weeks prior to completion, but this never happened. They were told they could not be shown around the site even on the day before completion.. Over the last few weeks it became increasingly apparent to them that the house would not be finished on time, yet each time they contacted GW, they were reassured that completion would go ahead on Friday. From what the solicitors tell us, they did not get the HSBC inspection done until the morning of the completion!

Well, they did complete on Friday and took possession of a house that has at least another week or twos worth of finishing to be done. We are not talking about poor workmanship or finishings, but unfinished work, bits of fittings lying around awaiting installation, work in progress mess everywhere. I would hesitate to call the problems snags because the house in this state would not qualify as finished in my opinion. Among the biggest problems are:

o Front door not fitting correctly - about 1cm of play when locked!
o Kitchen extractor fan not secured completely - wobbles up and down by at least 5 inches!
o At least 90% of the skirting board not flush against the wall, and badly warped in many places.
o Nearly every wall has patches, or holes which need filling and repainting.
o Nearly every electrical socket and switch needs some finished around edges - none of the sockets have power to them!
o No lawn in the garden - just soil and stones.
o Water leaking in the cloakroom.
o Dirt and sawdust everywhere.

This is just extra stress which they could do without at the moment. They were forced to delay the move, incurring extra cost of renting their current place for longer, penalty of last minute cancellation of removal firm and the list goes on.

So far aside sympathy from the sales guy, they have not had any confirmation of expected remediation times. Or mention of compensation for basically not having the house in a state they can move into, and incurring extra cost while waiting for them to finish off the house. After much complaining, they say the only thing we can do is to write in with supporting evidence of the state of the house!!!

On the same day GW completed on about 5 other houses on the street, and from the reactions of the new neighbours - it seems we are not alone. They have basically gone ahead with completion and handed over keys to a row of houses which have not yet been fully finished. The sales guy was not a popular person that evening, but was adamant he could not offer any thing other than a verbal promise that things would be corrected, and any further complaints should be put in writing.

From my point of view, the house should not have been handed over in its current state. GW seemed to be happy to do so to avoid any late completion penalties - but at the very least they should have warned buyers in advance so they could manage their moves.. and offer some form of compensation.. Effectively, they have sold a house, but still require full access to it for at least a week to finish things off. All the while, the house is not usable by the owners.

Incidently, during the sales/negotiation phase, GW employed a really tricky technique to effectively reduce the incentives offered. From what I gather, they talked buyers into spending extra money on various 'free' upgrades instead of monetary incentives.. They also complicate this whole process and along the line fool the buyers into thinking they have got a great deal. In my in-laws case, they only realised they had been 'confused' when they got their statement of completion and realised that the 'free' upgrades were not free, and they had effectively swapped the originally agreed monetary discount for upgrades which they would have normally not bothered with. Although there doesnt seem to be any illegal or wrong doing, the fact that they (and their son who is a qualified accountant no less!) were duped and only realised their mistake upon realising the completion statement and their own figures were out by the amount of 'free' upgrades, makes me wonder. One of the neighbours complained of the same thing. In any case, some of the upgrades were not delivered, and one was put into the wrong room!

Any advice for the in-laws from any one who have been in similar situations?

I recently moved into a new build (Barratts) home a few months ago - and we did have our moving in date delayed by a week after completion. However the big difference was that we were kept informed of this delay - so we could plan our move, and we came to a mutually agreeable compromise with regards to the completion vs actual moving in date.