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Who are the best house builders

Smaller regional house builders

The smaller regional house builders may not have the degree of flexibility to offer financial discounts, but could be in a better position to offer you a personalised bespoke design service during the construction of your new home. However, once you have moved in, getting any faults rectified could prove troublesome with the smaller builder, especially when the development is completed. A smaller builder may not have a reputation to protect and therefore has less to lose should things go wrong. However, smaller builders do not have the production constraints of the nationals and as a result, generally take longer to complete the home, which can result in much higher quality and attention to detail.

The very smallest builders, those building on single or double plots on a small infill site are very much a lottery. It is possible to buy a well-built, high specification new home from a “one-man band” builder who cares personally and takes a great pride in each home he builds. Equally, it is possible to buy a new home from a group of tradesmen who have banded together to finance the build and who are only interested in the financial return.

For more information:-

Our independent new home customer satisfaction survey

HBF House builder Star Ratings

HBF New home customer satisfaction survey results

Can House Builder Surveys be trusted?

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Current available figures as at 14 November 2011     * Estimated no figures available   ** Includes 16 awards by David Wilson Homes

Ultimately the finished quality of the brand new home you buy will depend on the individual site manager building it. However house builders can influence your new home decision in several ways including discounts available, level of service, choice and the specification available.   See also snagging defect photographs

National house builders

The larger well-known national Plc. house builders have a proven track record and dedicated customer care departments who may be better able to respond to any problems you may have for a period of two years from the time you move in. The largest can demand the best deals (national agreements) from their suppliers to give you, their customer, the best value. However, these large organisations are numbers and profit driven and use their size to maximise returns for shareholders and future expansion plans. Indeed, it is becoming more difficult theses days to know who is actually building your home with so many of the Plc. house builders merging or being acquired. Generally, the largest builders dictate the most demanding construction programmes, these being monitored on a weekly basis to ensure the production targets are being achieved. This means that your new home may not have time to fully dry out between building stages and it is possible that the quality of work could be sacrificed to achieve the completion date.

The larger the builder, the more they tend to invest in the promotion of their developments. They have full time sales advisors based on their developments, often with several fully furnished show houses with landscaped gardens. The financial outlay of this may be at the expense of the standard specification, which is often lower than that available from competing smaller builders. There may also be less choice and flexibility from the larger builder as their regional offices are tied to national agreements and the resultant specifications set by the builder’s group head office.

The table below shows information on the larger national house builders. This was the latest information publicly available on 22 July 2011.  Who is the best?  The largest builders may win the most NHBC Quality awards however, when set against the number of homes they build in a year, it is the smaller builder Miller who win the most awards for quality in proportion to the total homes built.

Interestingly, the higher the profit the fewer the awards, with Berkeley making the highest profit and unsurprisingly building the most expensive new homes with an average selling price of £271,000, yet winning only 10 Quality Awards.

Different flags, but is there much difference between the main house builders?