Sarah and Nigel Parker explore the benefits of buying new with Bloor Homes.
If you had told me two years ago, when Nigel and I put our previous new build home on the market, that I would buy another new build, I would never have believed you!
After five years of living in what I saw as a tiny beige box, I was pining for some original features: a restored fireplace; some original picture rails; sash windows and some of those Victorian tiles in the porch. The problem was that I also wanted a large open-plan kitchen/dining space and parking for at least two cars, along with a reasonably sized sunny garden, all of which was not achievable on a budget that wouldn’t leave us having to eat baked beans on toast for the rest of our lives! Our buyer finally got fed up with waiting for us to find the perfect house that probably didn’t even exist and withdrew their offer, sending us right back to square one.
We left it a few months and were just starting to think about putting the house back on the market and trying again, when I spotted a sponsored post from Bloor Homes whilst scrolling through Instagram one weekend the beginning of in early March 2019 I saw a sponsored post by Bloor Homes. I still have no idea what made me click the link to see what sort of houses were being built, but I am so glad I did as I very quickly found the exact layout that we had been searching for, in The Houghton housetype.
A detached house with a large kitchen/dining/family room at the rear, leading on to a really lovely sized west facing garden, four bedrooms (one with en-suite) and study downstairs. I wasted no time in calling the sales office and before the site was even launched, we had driven to another Bloor development nearby to have a chat about reserving our forever (I hope) home.
The sales advisors were really helpful and even showed us around one of the Houghton house types that were currently being built. It had just been plastered and had its kitchen installed. But Nigel found it quite difficult to visualise the house finished and started to have doubts! The sales advisors recommended that we drive to another Bloor Homes site in Saffron Walden where there was a show home for a similar house type (The Astley). As soon as we walked in, we were both sold on it and drove back immediately to reserve our own home.
We opted to take advantage of the Part Exchange Plus scheme, which gave us four weeks to sell our current home ourselves, for whatever price we could achieve on the open market, and if we didn’t manage to sell it for a price that we were happy with, then Bloor Homes would take our home in part exchange for a pre-agreed price. Sadly we didn’t manage to sell our home within the timescale but were still able to proceed with the new house purchase. This all made the process of buying our new home really easy and stress-free as we didn’t have to worry about our chain collapsing.
Choosing our options was so exciting! Due to the build stage, the kitchen and bathroom tiles had already been chosen, but luckily they were to our taste. We got to choose everything else, including the kitchen appliances, flooring, fitted wardrobes and extra electrical items, such as power and light in the loft and garage. I think we must have been in the sales office for over two hours!
We exchanged contracts in May 2019 and completed on 9th July 2019. The house immediately felt like home. We have so much more room to move around and although there are no period features, the ceiling height is so much bigger than other new builds that we have seen, so everywhere feels more spacious. We were even able to have 10 people for Christmas dinner, which was so lovely. And because of the great layout, I was able to cook and chat with everybody rather than feeling isolated in the kitchen as used to be the case.
Fast forward to May this year, and having waited the recommended 9 months before decorating, I have now started to add some colour and personality into our house. I started in the hall where I painted the bottom half of the walls pink (Nigel was not impressed at first, but now loves it). I then moved on to the kitchen, which I painted in a light sage green. I actually really liked the paint that Bloor Homes used throughout the whole house, it just needed a little bit of colour injecting in to some rooms.
In the master bedroom, I haven’t painted at all and have just added colour and texture with bed linen, curtains, prints and some faux ivy around the bed. The utility room is the next project I’m planning to tackle and I’m going to be a little braver, taking inspiration from the show home that we saw and loved.
So, am I happy that we chose another new build? The answer is most definitely yes. It was so lovely to move into a home that is like a blank canvas, with smooth plaster that is so easy to paint and rooms that are ready to add your own personality to. Another massive plus for us that we hadn’t even considered, is the fantastic little community that we have established with our neighbours. It’s great that everybody moved in at a similar time, so we were all in the same position, not knowing anybody etc. We have already had a few neighbourly get-togethers and everybody is just so lovely.
Would I buy another new build? No, but only because we love it here so much and cannot imagine moving for a very, very long time!
To see more from Sarah as she continues to stamp her mark on her new Houghton home, follow @houghton_no5