Property: 'It's a building site with no end in sight'

Property: 'It's a building site with no end in sight'

Thousands of people on new housing estates face living in building-site conditions for years. Since late 2007, some 200 housebuilders across the UK have gone into administration, leaving 20,000 newly built homes empty and 110,000 workers without jobs.

Meanwhile, many developers who are still building have slowed work to a crawl to allow them to reduce staffing levels and ensure homes are not completed until prices start rising and mortgages become easier to obtain.

Existing homeowners, like retiree Bernard Kavanagh, are paying the price. He bought a home at The Wintles, an eco-village in Bishops Castle, Shropshire, in 2006, fully expecting houses to be built immediately next to his home when the scheme's final phase was completed. Work began in 2007, but builders downed tools when the developers, Living Villages and Highmore Homes, had their funding withdrawn by HBOS late last year.

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"I'm in the worst possible position. I'm next to scaffolding, mud and a building site, with no end in sight. I'd planned to stay here for years, but now I'm moving because I don't know when all this chaos will end," says ­Kavanagh, who adds that his neighbours have complained about a lack of information from the developers. "The decision to stop work must have been made some time before it happened. But we didn't know anything about it."

Early phases of The Wintles sold out quickly, despite top-end price tags of £300,000 to £585,000. The scheme won awards for its "green" features, such as water recycling, solar panels and a community allotment.

But the glory days are over, as they are for Living Villages' other eco-village at St Mellion in Cornwall. "We had no one living there, but had to leave 25 homes at various stages of completion. We had our funding withdrawn without notice," says Living Villages' spokesman, Hugo Reeve.

Existing owners, such as Kavanagh, have no chance of compensation and to make matters worse, the likelihood of anyone selling near an eyesore building site is minimal in today's market.

New homes are not protected by "sale of goods" legislation, but most are in near-identical 10-year warranty schemes run by the National House-Building Council (NHBC), Zurich Municipal or Premier Guarantee. "But these protect the buyer only for matters relating to the property's structure," says an NHBC spokeswoman.

That means buyers are on their own if the house next door remains unfinished, thus spoiling the view, creating dust or attracting thieves and vandals. Nor do the warranties allow claims for inconvenience caused by developers who go bust or walk away before finishing essential infrastructure such as roads or shops.

"If a developer enters administration after a buyer pays a deposit but doesn't complete the sale, the deposit is protected up to £100,000, so the buyer is refunded. If the buyer moves in but the rest of the scheme is abandoned, there's no cover. The estate would probably be put up for sale to another developer, so we would advise owners who were already living there to contact the administrator to check on progress," says the NHBC.

A year ago, 24 people bought homes off-plan at Vivian Park Mews in Port Talbot, but developer Ballantyne Homes went bust with only eight complete. Those buyers moved in but spent months living on a building site until administrators found a developer to complete the project. Another Ballantyne scheme at Pembrey, near Carmarthen Bay, has six people living on a site where 30 homes are still incomplete, with no alternative developer found to finish the construction.

The position across the country is likely to get worse. The Home Builders Federation, an umbrella group representing developers, says it has no authoritative figures regarding members in administration, but a spokesman says: "Many are out of business or in tough times as banks have withdrawn support. It's outside the developers' control, so it's not just individual buyers feeling the pain."

Data to be released in May will give the exact number of new homes completed in 2008, but it is expected to be only around 50% of the 2007 level.

However, not all developers simply cut and run. Environ Country Homes, which is building the Oaks Hamlet scheme at Kings Hill, near West Malling, Kent, has slowed building timetables to save money, but ensured infrastructure is completed for early buyers. The alternative, says Environ's owner Tony Dowse, would have been to stop work. "That's not what they paid for," he says. "It wouldn't be fair."

Graham Norwood finds similar problems with high-rise developments in London

NHBC: nhbc.co.uk, 0844 633 1000; Zurich: zurich.co.uk, 01252 377474; Premier Guarantee: premierguarantee.co.uk, 0151 650 4343

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