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New Homes Quality Board launched to hold house builders to account over build quality

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AsleepInYorkshire
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New Homes Quality Board launched to hold house builders to account over build quality

#386494

Postby AsleepInYorkshire » February 13th, 2021, 8:13 pm

New Homes Quality Board

A new organisation charged with ensuring that developers deliver good-quality homes and that homeowners have greater consumer protections has been launched.

AiY

Mike4
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Re: New Homes Quality Board launched to hold house builders to account over build quality

#386496

Postby Mike4 » February 13th, 2021, 8:32 pm

"Log In or Register", it says, to read the article.

I'm reluctant to do either but being cynical, this will be just another body whose real interest underneath the media waffle is to protect the interests of the house builder from the small proportion of their customers with unreasonably high expectations. Sell the same house to three different buyers and each would come up with three totally different snagging lists, such is the nature of the Great British consumer. Builders can't win when it comes to 'build quality'.

Another factor is a house of a given top line spec (e.g. three bed detached in satellite estate near Reading) sells for almost the same price whether built using the best of everything, or the cheapest spec and the lowest cost labour available. So why would a builder build up to a standard when every pound he spends on doing it well is a pound slashed from his profit? Far better from a commercial POV to build as cheap as possible with every possible corner cut then field the snagging list after selling it.

Just my jaded POV having been in building trade most of my life. AND half a bottle of Henry Weston's Vintage Cider!

AsleepInYorkshire
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Re: New Homes Quality Board launched to hold house builders to account over build quality

#386502

Postby AsleepInYorkshire » February 13th, 2021, 8:54 pm

Mike4 wrote:"Log In or Register", it says, to read the article.

I'm reluctant to do either but being cynical, this will be just another body whose real interest underneath the media waffle is to protect the interests of the house builder from the small proportion of their customers with unreasonably high expectations. Sell the same house to three different buyers and each would come up with three totally different snagging lists, such is the nature of the Great British consumer. Builders can't win when it comes to 'build quality'.

Another factor is a house of a given top line spec (e.g. three bed detached in satellite estate near Reading) sells for almost the same price whether built using the best of everything, or the cheapest spec and the lowest cost labour available. So why would a builder build up to a standard when every pound he spends on doing it well is a pound slashed from his profit? Far better from a commercial POV to build as cheap as possible with every possible corner cut then field the snagging list after selling it.

Just my jaded POV having been in building trade most of my life. AND half a bottle of Henry Weston's Vintage Cider!

Mike,

Before I start may I take strong issue with you please ... where's the other half of Henry Weston's - don't tell me you're going to drink that too. It's at times like this that I loathe the internet :lol:

Seriously though - apologies for the rubbish link. it worked fine for me when I linked from my web browsers search, but as you say the links not quite as successful

So try this please New Homes Quality Board

I'll see if I can find some more links which perhaps help - you can keep your cider :roll:

Build quality isn't as subjective as you suggest. Between the NHBC Building Standards, Building Regulations, Robust Details, Codes of Practice and BBA (British Board of Agrements) and British Standards there is sufficient to determine the quality of build.

For example and I'm sure this as poor an example I can think of ... A mild steel galvanised roof strap holding down a wall plate is (iirc) required to be fixed at 2m centres, unless the roof weight and requirements has been "engineered" then the engineers calculations will determine centres. Each strap should have (iirc) a minimum of three fixings to the blockwork and the lowest fixing should not be more than (iirc) 3 holes up from the bottom. They should be plugged and screwed, not nailed. I believe (iirc) the strap should be a minimum of 1200mm long. So each and every part of a new home does have a standard to achieve.

However, if one strap out of the 50 on a roof had only 2 screws, not 3, it's highly likely it wouldn't fail structurally.

Take care

AiY

modellingman
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Re: New Homes Quality Board launched to hold house builders to account over build quality

#387425

Postby modellingman » February 17th, 2021, 11:28 am

Mike4 wrote:" ...but being cynical, this will be just another body whose real interest underneath the media waffle is to protect the interests of the house builder from the small proportion of their customers with unreasonably high expectations. Sell the same house to three different buyers and each would come up with three totally different snagging lists, such is the nature of the Great British consumer. Builders can't win when it comes to 'build quality'.


And surely therein lies the problem. If you buy a new car from a car dealer do you expect to return a few days later with a snagging list - dashboard rattling, heating difficult to control, some lights not working, oil leaking from sump onto your drive, etc? I suspect not.

So why should we not expect the same from a much more significant purchase? And why should we (or rather you) expect the house purchaser to be an expert in identifying faults caused by p*ss-poor quality control during construction? Maybe "builders can't win" because they don't (or aren't made to) try.

AsleepInYorkshire wrote:Build quality isn't as subjective as you [Mike4] suggest. Between the NHBC Building Standards, Building Regulations, Robust Details, Codes of Practice and BBA (British Board of Agrements) and British Standards there is sufficient to determine the quality of build.


Yes, but who or what is responsible for enforcing those quality standards? Because if effective standards were in place with full (or even reasonably full) compliance to those standards (backed up by regulatory enforcement and threat) there wouldn't have been the need to set up a New Homes Quality Board (https://www.nhqb.org.uk/).

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Re: New Homes Quality Board launched to hold house builders to account over build quality

#387429

Postby scrumpyjack » February 17th, 2021, 11:39 am

As an example of modern build quality, it is interesting to see the new houses in Buntingford where an irate subcontractor drove a JCB through 4 or 5 of them.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7004669/b ... ng-sacked/

They seem to have been built with softwood and plasterboard, and the builder claimed they were 'worth' 800k each!

If I were buying a house these days I think I would steer well clear of new builds.

btw I have to admit to being a complete hypocrite as I have large holdings in Barratt and Persimmon :D

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Re: New Homes Quality Board launched to hold house builders to account over build quality

#387441

Postby Mike4 » February 17th, 2021, 12:07 pm

modellingman wrote:So why should we not expect the same from a much more significant purchase?


That is an easy question to answer. Because your house is not being constructed in the controlled environment of a factory, with tooling investment to make hundreds of thousands all identical with just detail differences like paint colour. Each one is built by lowest cost labour to the lowest possible standard that gets is sold. Periodically there are attempts to prefabricate houses in factories in order to get the build standard up but they always fail because they can never get orders to construct batches of 5,000 identical houses. Technically it isn't hard to do but the economics of building houses one at a time to really high standards do not stack up.

Which brings us back to the point I was making earlier. Are you willing to pay an extra say, £50k for a really, really well-crafted house?

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Re: New Homes Quality Board launched to hold house builders to account over build quality

#387468

Postby modellingman » February 17th, 2021, 1:35 pm

Mike4 wrote:
modellingman wrote:So why should we not expect the same from a much more significant purchase?


That is an easy question to answer. Because your house is not being constructed in the controlled environment of a factory, with tooling investment to make hundreds of thousands all identical with just detail differences like paint colour. Each one is built by lowest cost labour to the lowest possible standard that gets is sold. Periodically there are attempts to prefabricate houses in factories in order to get the build standard up but they always fail because they can never get orders to construct batches of 5,000 identical houses. Technically it isn't hard to do but the economics of building houses one at a time to really high standards do not stack up.

Which brings us back to the point I was making earlier. Are you willing to pay an extra say, £50k for a really, really well-crafted house?


I agree that there are very different challenges involved in house construction to car manufacturing. However, to use these an excuse for poor quality in the housebuilding sector takes a very supplier-centric view. If the industry really wanted to up its game, it could no doubt find ways of doing so without adding the sort of costs you cite. Fortunately, the all party parliamentary group has taken a standpoint which is more housebuyer-centric and, unbelievably, government acted on its main recommendation.

Perhaps, the New Homes Quality Board will provides the motivation for the sector to up its standards. The NHQB's board clearly isn't stuffed out with big housebuilders which means at least its not fallen at the first hurdle. We'll have to see if your cynicism pans out.

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Re: New Homes Quality Board launched to hold house builders to account over build quality

#387513

Postby Johnspenceuk » February 17th, 2021, 4:58 pm

ReallyVeryFoolish wrote:
Mike4 wrote:
modellingman wrote:So why should we not expect the same from a much more significant purchase?


That is an easy question to answer. Because your house is not being constructed in the controlled environment of a factory, with tooling investment to make hundreds of thousands all identical with just detail differences like paint colour. Each one is built by lowest cost labour to the lowest possible standard that gets is sold. Periodically there are attempts to prefabricate houses in factories in order to get the build standard up but they always fail because they can never get orders to construct batches of 5,000 identical houses. Technically it isn't hard to do but the economics of building houses one at a time to really high standards do not stack up.

Which brings us back to the point I was making earlier. Are you willing to pay an extra say, £50k for a really, really well-crafted house?

My bold text. Those of us who hold LGEN shares better hope for the best since they are investing millions in this exact business.

RVF


Are you referring to LGEN owning CALA?

John

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Re: New Homes Quality Board launched to hold house builders to account over build quality

#387526

Postby Johnspenceuk » February 17th, 2021, 5:18 pm

ReallyVeryFoolish wrote:
Johnspenceuk wrote:
ReallyVeryFoolish wrote:My bold text. Those of us who hold LGEN shares better hope for the best since they are investing millions in this exact business.

RVF


Are you referring to LGEN owning CALA?

John

I don't know. I do know that LGEN have invested heavily in a modular home building business to factory build what we used to call prefabs.

RVF


If LGEN have invested as you say then I hope they do well a modern factory assembled home to the latest insulation standards and consistant build quality is the only way to deliver the new housing needed in this country predominantly social housing but also some private housing.
We do utilise prefabrication in the UK with T/frame which is a good product but the problem is consistant build quality. You can visit 2 sites by the same developer a couple of miles apart where the quality goes from excellent to mediocre which is directly attributable to site management. I would exclude CALA from that statement but certainly include all top 5 by volume UK housebuilders

John

AsleepInYorkshire
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Re: New Homes Quality Board launched to hold house builders to account over build quality

#387590

Postby AsleepInYorkshire » February 17th, 2021, 10:34 pm

Legal & General entered the modular housing arena knowing that there was a 10% cost inefficiency between modular and site build. They determined early on that they could close that difference. I believe they convinced themselves that the gap could be closed through volume.

Perhaps that argument fails to acknowledge something distinctly ironic. On the same basis if volume does decrease costs then it will have a similar impact for the traditional on site construction method. And the space between modular and site build will remain static at 10%. It's a thought.

The other large problem with modular is the restrictions it places on design.

AiY

AsleepInYorkshire
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Re: New Homes Quality Board launched to hold house builders to account over build quality

#387637

Postby AsleepInYorkshire » February 18th, 2021, 9:02 am


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Re: New Homes Quality Board launched to hold house builders to account over build quality

#387717

Postby Johnspenceuk » February 18th, 2021, 12:57 pm

ReallyVeryFoolish wrote:
Johnspenceuk wrote:
ReallyVeryFoolish wrote:I don't know. I do know that LGEN have invested heavily in a modular home building business to factory build what we used to call prefabs.

RVF


If LGEN have invested as you say then I hope they do well a modern factory assembled home to the latest insulation standards and consistant build quality is the only way to deliver the new housing needed in this country predominantly social housing but also some private housing.
We do utilise prefabrication in the UK with T/frame which is a good product but the problem is consistant build quality. You can visit 2 sites by the same developer a couple of miles apart where the quality goes from excellent to mediocre which is directly attributable to site management. I would exclude CALA from that statement but certainly include all top 5 by volume UK housebuilders

John

https://www.legalandgeneral.com/modular/

RVF



Hi That pic on the link in your post is the type of modular building I envisage. modules say 13mx2.4 max (I think 7.2m-8.4m x 2.4m would suffice in most scenarios) can be manufactured off site and assembled in any number to complete a dwelling on a prepared foundation by crane. There is a product they were called Decra a lightweight tile which would allow the roofs to be completed off site transported to site and lifted on if pitched roofs are specified although single ply membrane flat roofs in higher density flatted builds.
There is much criticism of UK housebuilding and some is certainly justified but if you had to build cars in conditions experienced on most sites the quality of cars would be similar to new housing so why not build what you can off site where quality can be more strictly controlled and eliminate nearly all the issues which have dogged housebuilding for as long as I can remember.

John


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