Builders tempt homebuyers with 'no bills' offer

Builders tempt homebuyers with 'no bills' offer

Homebuyers are being offered 18 months of free gas, electricity and water bills in what is likely to be the first of many bribes offered by desperate housebuilders this year.

Barratt Homes and its subsidiary David Wilson are offering to supply homebuyers with gas, electricity and water free of charge, and pay their council tax bills, until the summer of 2010 on developments in Lincolnshire and Derbyshire.

The average household's annual gas and electricity bill is £1,293, according to uSwitch.com, though good insulation in a new-build property means this is usually lower for those households. The average annual water bill is £330.

"Paying utility bills is one of the biggest variables in most household's disposable income," said James Poynor, sales director at Barratt North Midlands. "When gas and electricity prices are as high as they are now everyone feels the strain."

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Meanwhile, Notting Hill London, the private housing division of the Notting Hill Housing Group, is offering to kit new flats out with a bed, sofa, wardrobe, table and chairs and other essential furniture on some apartments in one of its gated residential developments in north London.

The bribes are not the first that desperate developers have offered in a bid to attract buyers - in September Barratt's rival Persimmon made a similar offer to pay buyers' household bills and in the summer a consortium of housebuilders in Devon were offering to throw in a free car with every flat bought.

Last November, upmarket property developer Fivewalk Homes offered an Aston Martin to anyone buying one of its £1.25m properties. To date, no one has taken it up on the deal. "The offer is still open and we are prepared to offer the equivalent cash amount off the property if preferred," said a spokeswoman for the company.

Such offers were made in a year when house prices tumbled by an average 16%, according to the Nationwide, and with commentators expecting further price falls this year housebuilders are expected to come up with ever more inventive deals.

"Clearly it is a very challenging time for housebuilders and they are trying to maintain or increase their market share from the market that is still there," said Steve Turner of the Home Builders Federation.

According to senior government housing officials, the number of new homes built in Britain this year will fall below 80,000. If this dire prediction is borne out, 2009 will be one of the worst years for the housebuilding industry for a century, and will exacerbate Britain's housing crisis.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2009