Redrow residents are not happy with the condition of their £450,000 home in Pentyrch, near Cardiff. Vanessa and Pratik Patel are far-from-happy customer having a string of problems with their Redrow home. Its been two years that Pratik and his wife are not able to find solutions to some of their complaints. The couple had to deal with a succession of faults. While some of the problems were fixed soon after the couple bought the house in November 2017, others still persists. Last month, Patel commissioned an inspector’s report into the snags, but said that Redrow ignored him.
Redrow customers, besides the Patels, are making complaints. Another furious resident Nik Patel, who lives in Lyon Square, a two-year-old block of Redrow flats in Harrow on the Hill, northwest London, spent £367,500 on a one-bedroom apartment. He has been grappling with leaks in the car park, broken gates, hot water outages right after he shifted to his new home and since then, is wrangling with the management company appointed by Redrow.
Equally miffed is another Lyon Square resident, who claimed to have found mould and leaks that destroyed the floor. Other residents, who have complained about onerous leasehold restrictions, have asked to be gifted the commonhold for the block because of what one described as “mis-selling”. Despite the concerns about quality, industry statistics narrates a different story. In a stark contrast with the numbers of the second-hand market, the housebuilder post a record sales and profits. Recently, Redrow revealed a sixth consecutive year of stellar profits after selling 6,443 homes. The FTSE 250 builder posted a 7% rise in pre-tax profits to £406m, with sales up 10% to £2.1bn. Since 2013, the profits of listed housebuilders have tripled from £21,000 to £66,100 last year. Redrow’s share price has also more than tripled.
Redrow also regained its top five-star rating in March, after three years in the second tier of housebuilders for customer satisfaction - an industry-wide score managed by the National House Building Council and the Home Builders Federation. Though Redrow scored top marks, with 92% of customers happy to recommend it to a friend, one homeowner said the reviews ought to be reassessed. Some suspect that homeowners have tended not to complain about shoddy workmanship in the past for fear of driving down their own house prices. “The consumer is [now] much more tuned into this negative sentiment about housebuilders,” said Numis analyst Chris Millington. “People get involved a bit more.”
Concerns about quality in the rush to build homes have layered previously as well. FTSE 250 housebuilder Bovis was forced to issue a profit warning, then admitted it had sacrificed standards to meet targets, tarnishing its reputation. The fiasco cost chief executive David Ritchie his job. One is Mark Scobey, a retired software entrepreneur who spent almost £600,000 on a five-bedroom house in the Cotswolds two years ago. He said the porch was not square and there was damp in the kitchen. Feeling ignored by Redrow, he started a Facebook page to drum up support from others - and posted chairman John Tutte’s mobile number online. “I know my rights,” said Scobey, 49. “I don’t care about the problem, I care how you deal with it.”
Redrow faces multitude problems, under the leadership of Tutte - who took over as executive chairman from founder Steve Morgan in April. However, it has pledged to focus more on quality. “We don’t always get it right; it disappoints me when we don’t and we try to put things right,” he said. “We might have some gripes from customers that have some issues, but we don’t walk away from problems.” Tutte, 63, has decided to resort to technology to resolve quality issues. He has handed iPads to Redrow’s site managers with an app developed to log problems before the house is sold to buyers. As well as leaving customers happier, Tutte hopes that homes with fewer snags will boost Redrow’s margins. “If you build the house right the first time, commercially, that is an advantage. That is one of our big motivations,” Tutte said.
In a statement, Redrow said: “Our homes are built and crafted by hand and when issues do occur, we always seek to rectify them as soon as possible. On the rare occasions where customers aren’t happy following our escalation process, there is always the opportunity for an independent industry body to reach a final resolution.”
