can someone advise me as well then, we have a defective house, signed off by building control (joke), and NHBC (bigger joke), we were taken to court by the builder for not paying in full for an unfinished house, had to finally settle out of court. we lived in it for 2 years unfinished while it churned through the court to the point where the builder had managed to drain us of every penny and we could not fight it any more. in the interim we had to pay £000s to put right emergency repairs and get a building control completion certificate to avoid being evicted. we still have an unfinished house, are seriously out of pocket, and although we have some NHBC 2 year snagging left (they backdated it to when we moved into the unfinished house as we were made homeless in the process of buying the house as it wasn't built on time as well as being total crap, and then the cowboy asks for 40% more than the contract....this builder clearly knows exactly how to work the system).
IF you take them to court, then NHBC will drop it completely till the court case is settled so you get no help from them, we were taken to court by the builder once we qualified as being technically resident, i.e 30 days afterw e first slept in the house, so he knew exactly what he was doing as then NHBC said go away and we either had to pay him in full or defend the case till we finally had to settle. If you win, fine, but if you don't you will end up paying your fees, his fees and it will cost you around £50-60K to go all the way, if our builder is anything to go by so unless you have a very water tight contract and can really prove your case, you are just wasting money and you might as well use it to finish the house.
We are finding that despite settling out of court, NHBC seem to take the view, as we are finding that since it has been in court, they are refusing to honour any snagging. So the best you can do is argue the toss with NHBC to the end of their process, then see if anyone can advise you, or me, what to do next.
Although we had a 'property specialist lawyer' handling our case, they were not exactly great value, and rings were run around them by the lowlife on the other side, who knew exactly how to remove all our rights from us. In fact they tried to draw out the court procedure so that all the 2 year snagging period would be timed out....
Be very careful.