Overall this I’ve scored the lowest for a reason; I reserved my plot off plan and the anticipated completion date was early 2021, this ended up being four months later and just the lack of communication was I found disgusting really, I like many others who have sinced moved in and even people still waiting for their property to complete are regularly driving on site to visually track the progress because the customer service team have no idea and give many different excuses which don’t even add up which I found extremely frustrating to the point I wanted to pull out and get something else, especially when you see that the property was actually rebuilt because the brickies employed weren’t building the house straight makes you worry.
The above aside, the property is well designed and has character, it’s not a typical Persimmon or other build which is just a square block, these homes all have more design and character externally, also the appliances, fittings and construction is well made and overall I’ve had very few snags, the few snags I have had took months to get fixed though because the contractors are all independent and committed to other sites, they also change frequently because Harron Homes don’t pay them well or on-time I’ve heard a few say to me which is part of the reason for the delays, one thing also to mention is I’ve noticed that the external brickwork is not fully straight meaning any lighting shows the mis-alignment of the bricks all over.
The rooms are all of good proportions and generous gardens for new builds which is good, the prices Harron Homes charge for extras is ridiculous though, £800 for an alarm system, £500 for a upgraded shower head, etc, £2000+ for stainless steel switches, I ended up getting flooring and key bits as extras but the rest I’ve done myself, others on the development have even got their own flooring which is disappointing at the amount these houses cost why things like these aren’t more realistic/competitive. I did also have my rear garden turfed (another expensive extra) but the quality of the turf was nice but it’s lumpy and the ground was not well levelled so I wish I had got someone else in for that one too!
The site manager has changed quite a few times but as of writing this article they seem to have got a good site manager and assistant manager trying to improve things but the site is still under construction which has meant that if your working from home you are going to continuously have diggers, builders, hammering and drilling going on in the background, can’t be helped I’m sure but they seem to be building in random pockets across the site meaning everyone’s hearing the same noises not just people at the outer edges.
As with all new builds there is a ongoing property management fee of something like £7 per month per property, the road isn’t even finished and the children park isn’t even built so I really struggle to see what I’m getting for that until the property is finished which may be a few years based on their current speed.
Please tell us what you like and dislike about this area:
Selby overall is a small functional town with it’s good and bad points, the good points been the Selby town centre is walk-able distance from the development which is located just on the outskirts of Selby.
Selby itself has a wide range of shops, from three supermarkets to a local butchers, farm shop, and many other traditional shops, it also has a well connected train station which allows direct trains to London, Leeds/Manchester, York and Hull (one of my main reasons for choosing this development), it also has a small market on a Monday however very small selection of stalls.
Selby also has some nice restaurants scattered around from local Italian to Indian to Thai and Greek, I’ve tried them all and they are all nice and small run, there is the traditional Wetherspoons as well which is good as well as some smaller cafes and bistros around the town, overall are good.
The bad points of Selby are it’s a cheaper location for a reason really, there are a lot of unemployed and homeless/drugged looking people roaming the streets and you certainly would be nervous walking through on a late dark evening and that’s backed up with strong police presence and regular police sirens and news articles so there is a lot of anti-social behaviour, I knew this before so I had an alarm fitted and CCTV installed pretty quickly and have since installed PIR lightings and bolted the Garden gates and over the past few months this has proved useful as there has been suspicious characters and even travellers roaming the site and a few Police visits as well.
The development itself is based slightly outside of Selby which is good, convenient and keeps away from most of the bad points above, majority of the properties have double width driveways allowing ample parking for two cars for almost all the properties, however where people have a third car (children’s cars or visitors) they are forced to park on the street/kerbside with no allocated visitor parking which is typical of new developments really.
Please share one thing (or more) which you wish you had known before you moved in:
The costs of extras was unreasonable so research your own flooring, lighting, and other things before since I asked for additional power near certain areas to put my own lighting and socket connections in for one, also landscape your own garden and arrange that
How has the building management responded to any problems or issues you have raised:
The Harron homes customer service team are disappointing and actually caused more delays and frustrations, the onsite building managers though are the best people to contact and have dealt with what they can but they are stretched themselves trying to finish off all the other delayed properties