Advice please :Charles Church (Persimmon Homes)

soullimbu · 12th November 2009, 13:48

HI everyone! I have reserved a plot which is being built at the moment by Charles Church which is part of persimmon homes at Cumnor Hill, Oxford. Since joining this site I have seen huge complaints about the developers and now I am very much worried.

Should I still go ahead with the purchase or should I back off! I am confused Please help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

tiptree · 13th November 2009, 17:06

my advise is think long and hard.I moved in to my brand new home mid 2006 and everytime it rains our sinks back the toilets fill to the rim and HALF A MILLON pound houses at the end of the development have human waste going onto there lawns and nothing gets done,we have even got our MP involved and still as i sit in my kitchen i can hear the sinks guggling.It would appear the pump that was installed isnt big enough to take the strain so backs up with heavy rain fall.so dont buy if it has a pump house installed.

soullimbu · 13th November 2009, 17:23

Thank you for your time and advice.

I'd love to hear some more views please, from other members before I commit to it.

willyj · 13th November 2009, 19:15

Persimmon have a poor record, Charles Church, a trusted name before Persimmon acquired them, is the brand for their upmarket homes.
At the end of the day it is down to the site manager, the back up he is getting from higher up and the time he has got to achieve completion.
A look around the site should give you a clue as to what to expect with the finished product. Is it tidy, are the roads kept clean, the hoarding well built, painted and clean, the sign board up to date on proper timber posts and clean? Is the plant parked tidily after hours, walkways marked and signed, how detailed is the safety notice board? Are skips marked for different types of waste?
You should get a feel of how the job is managed. If there are piles of rubbish accumulating around skips that seem to be dropped randomly around the site, mounds of excavated spoil lying around, signboards and hoarding uncared for and lorries spreading muck up and down the roads it is probably best to walk away.

Chuck Sidfrum · 19th January 2010, 13:05

Employ surveyor to check property, ideally at construction stages before ceilings/plasterboard covers up hidden issues.

Especially check floor joist installation. Suggest you have a retention (retainer?) of monies, written into contract, so if/when Charles Church don't resolve warranty issues, you can pay for it to be done privately.

Be aware of difference between Charles Church Actual Build Standards, NHBC Guidelines, & NHBC Technical Standards - they are all different things.

A site manager told me, 'if we built a house to NHBC guidelines it would be a pretty funny looking house'.

I personally would never purchase a Charles Church home, they have ruined the whole experience for us. Lowest specification, poor workmanship, ingnoring suppliers instructions and advice.

Tony · 19th January 2010, 22:19

It is good advice Chuck and a real possibility if you are having your own house build or are buying from a low volume builder. However, you will struggle to get the mass builders to let you do this. It is not in their interest.

soullimbu · 3rd February 2010, 21:44

Thanks you all for your advice! We have thought long and hard and have decided to purchase a 4 bed det house in cumnor heights (Charles Church). Fingers crossed that there are no major problems. Apparently the site manager has won few awards
We will be using a snagging inspector (newbuildinspectors) after it is completed (March) to get a professional report on our new build home. I just hope that they would build the house properly.

Tony · 6th February 2010, 11:09

I don't think an NHBC "Pride in the Job" award is an indicator of quality. I would expect all site managers to have pride in the job - it is a reward for mediocrity. I would hope that they could all get one.

SecretSquirrel · 22nd May 2010, 12:20

To be honest with any new home you will experience problems. That is just a fact. Persimmon/Charles Church build alot of homes so compared to other companies you will hear more complaints about problems as there are more homes to complain about...

Im sure that many many more people are happy with their homes than unhappy.. but no one ever goes out of their way to express happiness in purchases but more in the negatives.

Ive lived in a persimmon home for 3 years and it is fantastic. Truth.

Chuck Sidfrum · 15th July 2010, 13:32

SecretSquirrel - In our first year (trying to get faults fixed) we spoke to over 50 new home owners from Charles Church across multiple estates, not ONE was happy with Charles Church. All had the same structural issue we were concerned with - a problem Charles Church has had since Persimmon ownership back in the 1990's. We also spoke to several Persimmon Homes owners (on some estates the two are side by side with identical house design, just different specifications, e.g. kitchens). We're nearing 5th year now

However, to give balance, Charles Church claimed 98% customer satisfaction - although never gave any suporting evidence of this. The house builders surveys we were sent for customer satisfaction were somewhat unusual, in that they were surveys within surveys. If you were relatively happy you filled in the first mini survey. If you weren't you got a second seperate and more detailed survey (many months later). I question if these match up together at the final tally.

With a director of Charles Church warning of effects on resale value if you complain too loud, and others in the company warning of repurcusions of complaining - plus ones own common sense of the effect on your home's investments value (should you need to sell/move) - many home owners are scared to let their issues get out in the open. This gives the builder an unfair advantage from the start. I won't go into how the NHBC extends this advantage even further

suffice to say what I discovered after buying from within the industrys' own professionals was a often repeated description of the NHBC as 'useless', and I can now fully see why and how the same problems repeat over and over within the NHBC claims process.

I found three types of owners; 1) Those who didn't know/understand issues with snagging/defects, 2) Those who had issues, but didn't want others to know and said things were ok, 3) Those that had issues and were pushing for works to be done.

Of those with ackowledged issues only a third were proactive in pushing forward - particularly when an honest independent investigation was required to really solve the issue instead of patching over with a builders recommended quick fix. But getting to the truth is very very difficult with any complex issues, and these can be estate wide problems. One issue took 4 years for a plausible solution - however the quieter home owners got something else, only the vocal/knowledgeable owerners got the better fix offered - an investigation within an investigation.

Tony - Bovis built a retainer into our contract on new property about 5 years ago. Although we found Bovis to be very good (room for improvement yes), but miles ahead of Charles Church. With Charles Church it's the attitude, arrogance, denials and lack of professionalism which comes from top down.

WillyJ - whilst I'd fully agree a good site manager would reduce number of issues over a bad one, I have two things to expand on. 1) Charles Church seems to have no concerns reusing a poor site managing, even when they have estate wide complaints regarding prior developments run under that same site manager, 2) Even if the site manager fails in his responsibilities, you'd expect customer services to put things right. We found customer services to be the bigger problem, and that was across the board within the company, and the higher one complains the worse we were treated.