Buying a Show House

Phileas Frog

Afternoon all, hope you are all enjoying your weekend!

The show house in a new development near me has come up for sale and I'm considering buying it, contents included. Is there anything in particular that I need to be aware of in such a situation? All the furniture is normal sized by the way!

For example... Should the contents inventory be listed in the contract? Would you buy if it wasn't? What's to stop someone replacing or removing certain items after contracts are signed if there's no inventory.

Phileas Frog

Anyone have any advice?

Star Lord

Anything that is supposed to be included with the sale should be inventoried, so that you get what you've agreed to buy.

Dolbhad

Do you know how much the house is for including all contents? I have heard of people picking and choosing the contents of show house to be left behind when they buy it as sometimes they aren’t worth the price put on them or aren’t happy with the brand or make etc.

Make sure there is a list included in the contracts of all items agreed and that it sets out clearly the cost of house and cost of the goods as stamp duty is not payable on contents.

nak

Your mortgage will only cover the value of the property, so you will need to pay for the contents separately.

Gumbo

Make sure all walls are touched up.
All plumbing working correctly.
All carpets and flooring cleaned.

Kenno90

Also to note, the value they add on for the contents is often inflated to a stupid degree.

Cyrus

id get a full inventory and make sure you are happy with whats included in it as somethings may not be included. Also whats the premium for the showhouse and is it worth that to you, often show houses are prepared to wow not necessarily to live in, i wouldnt have taken the show house in our estate for example even if it was the same price (slightly different scenario as it was mid terrace as well) but the decor and furniture wasnt for me.

daheff

also bare in mind that the show houses are usually the first finished...so thrown up to a degree.

builders usually find issues as they build and iron out for subsequent builds.

just make sure you get a good engineer in to check the house out.

dave 27

Being in the industry show houses are usually put up with a huge amount of pressure to make deadlines of openings so its possible the house was finished for visual purposes as opposed to practical purposes.

Get a snagger to be through in the investigation, run all taps to ensure no leaks in the pipes, run the dishwasher, washing machine etc, heating so all rads are working

Ensure the fireproofing is done where pipes are going up through the floors (you will see in the hotpress around the pipes at the floor level if its up there).

Then generally i would say any licks of paint and also any settlement cracks need to be fixed as its probably got a couple if its a timber frame especially, it would have the summer to dry out if its there long enough