New builds: the deadlines nobody mentions at the sales suite

How is buying a new build different from buying an existing home?

With an existing home, the timetable is set by the chain and nobody is bound until exchange, which usually comes after all enquiries are answered and searches are back. With a new build, the developer sets the timetable and enforces it through the reservation agreement. You pay a reservation fee, the plot is taken off the market, and the agreement requires you to exchange contracts by a date it fixes. Where the developer is registered with the New Homes Quality Board, the New Homes Quality Code requires that date to be reasonable and not less than six weeks after the reservation date, unless you ask for an earlier one (requirement 2.2, version 2 dated March 2026, applying to homes reserved from 2 March 2026, checked 20 September 2026). The Code binds registered developers only, so check the register before relying on it. Miss the deadline and the developer can re-market the plot and keep whatever the agreement says it may deduct.

The property may not be built when you exchange. On an off-plan purchase you commit to buy something that exists only as a plot number, a plan and a specification. Completion then happens not on a fixed date but on notice: once the developer certifies that the property is practically complete, it serves notice and you must complete within the period the contract sets. The New Homes Quality Code requires the contract to define that completion notice period rather than fixing a length itself (requirement 2.7, checked 20 September 2026), so read it before you exchange and diarise what it gives you. That notice can arrive months after exchange, at short notice, and in a week that suits the developer's year end rather than your removal plans.

The contract is the developer's standard form, drafted for the developer. It will be long, and it will contain terms that a conveyancer acting for a buyer of an existing home would never accept. Some of them can be negotiated; many cannot. The job of your conveyancer is to tell you which are which, and to make sure the ones that matter most, the long stop date, the deposit protection and the specification, are right before you are bound.

What has to happen in the 28 days before exchange?

Work that on an ordinary purchase spreads over the whole of a chain has to fit into the window the reservation agreement gives you, whether that is the twenty-eight days developers commonly ask for or the six weeks the New Homes Quality Code requires of its registered members. Your conveyancer needs the developer's contract pack, which includes the draft contract and transfer, the title to the whole site, the planning permission and any section 106 agreement, the roads and sewers agreements or bonds, the warranty documentation, the specification and plans, and the estate management arrangements. Enquiries are raised and answered against the clock.

Searches are ordered on day one. The local authority search is the slow one and in some areas takes longer than the reservation period, which is why developers' pre-agreed search packs and regulated personal searches are common on new build sites. Whether your lender will accept a personal search is answered lender by lender in its Part 2 entry of the UK Finance Mortgage Lenders' Handbook, not by a single rule, and some lenders do not accept one at all, so we check your lender's own answer before ordering. Our what searches are needed guide explains what each search covers.

The mortgage has to be in place. A lender valuing a new build will check for incentives, because a developer paying your deposit, your legal fees or fitting a kitchen for free affects the price the lender is willing to lend against. Every incentive must be disclosed on the UK Finance Disclosure Form, which replaced the older disclosure of incentives form on 21 February 2018 and covers newly built, converted and renovated property rather than incentives alone (UK Finance Mortgage Lenders' Handbook, checked 20 September 2026). It is the seller who completes it, and it must reach the lender's conveyancer no later than seven working days before exchange. Undisclosed incentives are a serious matter for everyone involved.

Identity and source of funds checks, the deposit, buildings insurance from exchange where the property is complete, and your written authority to exchange all have to be ready. Where the developer's deadline is unrealistic, the honest answer is to ask for an extension in writing rather than to exchange on a contract nobody has finished reading. Our new build conveyancing service runs to these deadlines as a matter of routine.

What is a long stop date and why does it matter?

The long stop date is the date after which, if the property is still not complete, you can rescind the contract and recover your deposit with interest. It is your only real protection against an open-ended build. Without it, a developer that runs a year late has still got your deposit and you are still bound to complete whenever it finishes.

Developers propose long stop dates that suit them, often well beyond the anticipated completion date, and some contracts allow the developer to extend the date unilaterally for weather, supply problems or other causes. A buyer's conveyancer will try to shorten the date and to limit the extension rights. Whether the developer agrees depends on the market, but the request should always be made, and the answer should be understood before exchange.

Alongside the long stop date, the contract should say what happens if the developer changes the specification, whether you can inspect before completion, and what happens to the deposit if the developer becomes insolvent. Under the Standard Conditions of Sale a deposit is held by the seller's conveyancer as stakeholder, which means it cannot be released to the seller before completion, but a new build contract routinely varies that by special condition so the developer has the money and the buyer relies on warranty cover instead. The New Homes Quality Code requires adequate arrangements to protect deposits rather than stakeholder specifically, and names warranty insurance and a separate client account among the ways of doing it (requirement 2.13, checked 20 September 2026). Ask which applies to you: NHBC Buildmark, for example, covers loss of deposit on the builder's insolvency before completion for the first owner only, at 10 per cent of the purchase price to a maximum of 100,000 pounds (NHBC Buildmark policy booklet 2025, checked 20 September 2026).

What happens if my mortgage offer expires before the property is finished?

How long a mortgage offer lasts is set by each lender, not by law. What is fixed is that the offer document must state the period prominently, because the Financial Conduct Authority requires it (MCOB 6.4.11R, checked 20 September 2026), so the answer for your purchase is on your own offer. Many lenders allow longer on a new build and some will consider an extension, and both should be checked with the lender at the outset rather than assumed. If the property completes after the offer expires, you must apply again, on the lender's then current criteria and rates, and there is no guarantee the new offer will be for the same amount. Meanwhile you are bound by the contract.

The check is simple and often missed: compare the offer expiry with the developer's anticipated completion date and the long stop date. If the long stop date is after the offer expiry, there is a period in which you could be obliged to complete without a mortgage. Speak to the lender or broker about extensions before exchange, and consider whether the long stop date should be brought forward to match.

What should I check about the warranty and the estate?

Almost every new home comes with a ten-year structural warranty. The three common providers are built the same way: a builder liability period of two years from completion, during which the developer must put right work that fails to meet the provider's standards, then an insurance period of eight years covering structural defects, which is ten years in total (NHBC Buildmark policy booklet 2025; Premier Guarantee defects and structural insurance periods; LABC Warranty new homes policy, all checked 20 September 2026). Read what your own policy covers, because cosmetic snagging falls outside the insurance once the early period ends, and cover on the shared parts of a block can run differently from cover on a house. There is no single published list of warranty providers that lenders accept: each lender answers for itself in part 2 of the UK Finance Mortgage Lenders' Handbook, so the provider on your site has to be checked against your lender. A home with no warranty and no professional consultant's certificate is hard to mortgage and hard to sell.

The estate arrangements are the part that causes resale problems later. On a new estate the roads and street lighting may be adopted by the highway authority under an agreement under section 38 of the Highways Act 1980, and the sewers and lateral drains by the water company under an agreement under section 104 of the Water Industry Act 1991 (checked 20 September 2026). Neither section covers open space: that is normally either transferred to a management company or secured by a planning obligation, which is why open space so often stays private even where the roads are adopted. Where there is a management company, every owner pays an estate charge, and on a freehold house that charge may be secured by an estate rentcharge. If an estate rentcharge goes unpaid for forty days, and even though no demand has been made, section 121 of the Law of Property Act 1925 lets the rentcharge owner take possession of the house and keep the income until everything owed is paid, or grant a lease of it to a trustee to raise the money (checked 20 September 2026). That is why an unmodified estate rentcharge causes trouble on a sale or a remortgage.

Two things about that are commonly misunderstood, and both cut against the owner. The Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 did remove the section 121 remedies, but only for what it calls a regulated rentcharge, meaning one that could not lawfully be created today. An estate rentcharge can still be created, under section 2(3)(c) of the Rentcharges Act 1977, so it is not a regulated rentcharge and the section 121 remedies survive against it in full. The same Act would bring estate management charges within a reasonableness, consultation and information regime with a route to the tribunal, at Part 5, but none of Part 5 is in force and no commencement date has been appointed (checked 20 September 2026). Nor does the sixty year extinguishment in section 3 of the Rentcharges Act 1977 help, because section 3(3)(b) takes estate rentcharges out of it, and the statutory redemption procedure is closed to them as well by section 8(4). What can be done is practical rather than statutory: ask the developer for a deed of variation limiting the remedies before you exchange, check whether the transfer already excludes or cuts them down, since section 121 applies only so far as the deed does not say otherwise, and where neither is available ask your conveyancer about indemnity insurance, which is what most lenders will accept.

If the new build is a flat, it will be leasehold, and a new long residential lease granted for a premium on or after 30 June 2022 can only reserve a peppercorn ground rent under the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Act 2022, with leases of retirement homes brought in on 1 April 2023 (checked 20 September 2026). There are exceptions, so check your own lease rather than assume: business leases, statutory lease extensions, community housing leases and home finance plan leases are outside the Act altogether, and on a shared ownership lease the peppercorn covers your share only, so the landlord's share can still carry a real rent. The service charge regime described in our leasehold service charges guide applies from day one, and the first year's budget is an estimate that often rises once the block is occupied.

What happens at completion and afterwards?

On notice of practical completion, your conveyancer carries out the pre-completion searches, requests the mortgage advance and pays the balance on the completion date. You should inspect the property before completion where the contract allows, and raise a snagging list. Most developers will attend to snagging after completion, but your position is strongest before you have paid.

Stamp Duty Land Tax in England, or Land Transaction Tax in Wales paid to the Welsh Revenue Authority, is calculated on the price paid, and where the developer's incentives reduce the effective price the tax position should be checked rather than assumed, because the tax is charged on the chargeable consideration and what counts as a reduction in the price rather than a separate benefit is not always obvious. First-time buyer reliefs may apply; our stamp duty basics guide covers the thresholds.

Registration at HM Land Registry on a new estate is a transfer of part of the developer's title on form TP1 rather than a whole title on TR1, and the new title number is created when the application completes. New estate registrations take longer than ordinary transfers, but not because of the estate plan: HM Land Registry approves an estate layout plan in advance precisely to make plot sales quicker, and approval is free. The delay is that a transfer of part is treated as creating a new title rather than updating one, and HM Land Registry completes about half of those in around nine months, with almost all done in about twelve to thirteen months (HM Land Registry processing times, page updated 2 July 2026, checked 20 September 2026). Waiting is not a risk to your ownership: HM Land Registry says legal ownership rights are secured from the moment the application is received rather than when it is completed. Where a delay puts a sale or a remortgage at risk, an expedite can be requested and costs nothing.