We at Housebuilder Pro are delighted to announce that we have been officially been named an accredited supply partner for the New Homes Quality Code. This means that Housebuilder Pro is now officially recognised as a tool to help new home developers remain compliant with this new framework.
Nick Taylor, Sales Director at Housebuilder Pro said,
“We are excited to become an accredited supply partner to the New Homes Quality Board. Over the last few months we have begun rolling out changes to the system to help those developers that have signed up for the New Homes Quality Code, a direct result of their feedback. It’s great to now know we have been officially recognised by the Board, and what a great team to work with too. We certainly see this as a long-term relationship in the making”.
But what is the New Homes Quality Code?
In the final quarter of 2021, and following a public consultation, the New Homes Quality Board published its ‘New Homes Quality Code’, a new code of practice compiled with the intention of driving quality within the house building industry and protecting purchasers. The code is quite extensive but can be summarised into six key requirements. As with all codes of practice, compliance can be tricky. Let’s look at how Housebuilder Pro software makes the process of complying with these points much easier for new home builders.
Prohibit high-pressure selling
For each plot listed in Housebuilder Pro, there is a compulsory ‘activity’ section, with 20 steps that must be marked as complete, with a date and user ‘stamp’ (a message that details when the step has been completed and whom it was marked as complete by). This makes it easy to track when each step in the construction and sales process has been completed and by whom, allowing management teams to review steps made in the sales process and evaluate how the sale was made and in what time.
Housebuilder Pro’s email marketing function limits the ability of sales teams to spam users, adding an alert if a contact has received an email via the system more than twice within a 24-hour period. This deters users from overselling.
Require the developer to provide all relevant information about the home during the sales process
The myHome Customer Portal gives new-home purchasers access to their property from anywhere, giving them the ability to view the latest construction progress of their new-build, contract exchange dates and full property specification. As well as this, purchasers can view all signed documents within the portal. Transparency has been turned up to maximum here.
Enforce a fairer reservation agreement
The New Homes Quality Code specifies a maximum amount of £150 for Early Bird arrangement fees. Should this rule be unchanged, changes will be made to the reservation form in the system to alert the user that this limit will be surpassed should a higher an amount greater than £150 be entered.
The agreed purchase price of new homes will also need to be included into all reservation form types (both Early Bird and Full). We have included agreed purchase price fields within the reservation form by default.
The New Homes Quality Code also specifies that new-home developers must give customers a copy of the reservation form – this is also located in the myHome Customer Portal as well as in the main system where a user can print out the form themselves.
Allow customers to have a professional carry out a pre-completion inspection
Aftercare and snagging is a core part of the Housebuilder Pro system. System admins can create new ‘site user’ account roles, designed specifically for on-site inspectors. These users see their own unique version of Housebuilder Pro, giving them the ability to add and remove snags for each inspection stage while on site using a portable device.
Here, site users can mark snags as open and complete, and upload documents and images to show existing snag issues or resolved snag issues.
Specify that a home must be ‘complete’, preventing builders paying customers to move into an incomplete new home early
In Housebuilder Pro, activity stages help determine what stage a property is at in the build lifecycle. A property can only be marked as ‘complete’ once all previous activity stages have been checked off, this includes legal completion, too. Each activity stage is marked with a time and user stamp as mentioned previously, so the speed in which these activity stages have been ticked can be closely monitored to ensure corners are not being cut.
Have an effective aftercare service in place to deal with issues such as snagging
Housebuilder Pro comes equipped with a sophisticated aftercare module. This feature allows all users associated with the sale of a new home to add and remove snags – including the customer themselves via the myHome Customer Portal. Aftercare snag images can be uploaded to the system also, to clearly communicate where the reported issues lie so on-site members can resolve them. This process is directly communicated with the customer via the myHome Customer Portal. This allows the builder to adhere to the code while simultaneously delivering high quality customer service.
Housebuilder Pro is a dynamic platform, delivering value to new home developers on a comprehensive scale – from the initial enquiry right through to aftercare – with CRM and property management functionality.
To book a free demo and get hands on with the system, sign up here.
