Alston Grange, PR3

Do not buy a home from these guys, it will be the worst thing that you do. TILIA = Totally Incompetent Lying and Inconsiderate I could write a novel on the issues that we have had with Tilia from the moment we paid the reservation fee to 6 months after completion where the snagging list is still not resolved. Here are the 3 most illustrative issues. 1. Forging of our Signatures on the Reservation Form On reservation in March 2022 the completion date was June/July 2022 and a range of incentives were included. Over the coming weeks and months it transpired (only after nearly 100 emails and calls) that the lady who took our reservation printed out a brand new cover sheet with a different completion date (December 2022) and removed all incentives expect one. She the proceeded to copy and paste our signatures from the reservation form that we signed to "verify" the new doctored reservation form. This highlights the fact that you cannot trust anything Tilia say or do, even if it is on a signed form or legal document. It takes months of digging to find out whats happening and even then they are not interested in helping. 2. Shoddy Workmanship When we carried out our walkthrough of the property 2 days before move in with the Site Manager I pointed out a number of key issues including the wrong fitted appliances, a poorly fitted back door that didn't shut properly, and a dangerously fitted shower door in one of the ensuites. The Site Manager didn't care and came up with excuse after excuse, "it didn't say anywhere on the paperwork about the appliance", "the door will settle and shut properly in a few weeks", "the shower door is the right one, even though it's different to the show home". It took nearly 8 weeks to get a answer on the wrong appliance that was fitted (a washer instead of a washer dryer) and due to the time of year that we moved into the property we had to go out and purchase a dryer ourselves. When Tilia finally came back they admitted they had made a mistake and offered to fit the Washer/Dryer instead of the Washer, I tried to explain to them that there was no point as we already had to go and purchase a dryer but they were not interested. It took several weeks to come to a agreeable solution. The door was that poorly fitted that after a month or so the handle actually snapped off in my hand, when I spoke to Tilia about this and how we couldn't lock the door they weren't interested because we had more than one route out of the house so it wasn't a priority. Great for security when you can't shut one of your doors properly or lock it. In the end after numerous phone calls we managed to get Tilia to put a temporary fix in place - a new handle. At the time of this review (6 months after reported issue) the door still does not shut properly and the new handle is about to snap off too. Again I have reported this to Tilia and they are not interested. The other major issue was the Shower Door, it opened and slammed hard against a sink, it is perhaps one of the worst design ideas I have seen. This was a massive hazard as we are talking about a 7ft pane of glass slamming into a sink every time it opens. Again I made numerous reports to Site and Head Office who said it was standard, that is what should be fitted. After speaking to the next door neighbours it became clear that it was only our house that had that fitting but Tilia still refused to change it. We had to send numerous pictures to Head Office before they finally agreed to change the dangerous shower door. These are only 3 issues that we had, we had a total snagging list of close to 150 and 6 months on over half are still not resolved. 3. Site Manager and Head Office John the Site Manager doesn't care about any of the houses, he gets his number 2 Matt to sort everything. Matt is a great guy but unable to authorise anything so nothing gets done. Head Office Customer Support do not care either and just read or send canned responses. There are multiple residents who have/are facing similar issues. Gardens and drainage are the biggest issues.

Poor build. Issues with mould and damp. Customer service don’t want to know. Book work in for contractors to turn up with either the wrong materials or none! Shoddy workmanship throughout. Cheap materials used. Garden full of rubble. Would never buy again from these builders.

We love our little bungalow, the layout is perfect for us and the location is really quiet. The park still isn't finished, there are quite a few families on site now and it's a shame they haven't completed it yet. Tilia and together homes are still the same, it still takes an age to get anything done.

The design of the development looks good. It has changed from when we bought our house but still has the facilities planned when we agreed our purchase. It would be nice to see a park on the development planned. There are footpaths, ponds, etc planned but a park for the young children would be a good addition. I've seen other developments in the area and they all seem to have these as standard. It also mentions a retail opportunity with the community center planned. I really hope this is a shop or cafe/eatery of some kind. When the onsite building team were looking after us when we first moved in, the service was fantastic. Danny and his team regularly checked in on us and rectified everything we asked about. Since we moved to Kier Customer Service and now Tilia, we have found this to be a different story. We have been waiting for over a year for one particular problem with our roof to be corrected.

We have a 2 bed semi detached bungalow and I love it so much! We have downsized and it's great, very well made, good quality fixtures and fittings, the windows are lovely, really good quality, really good size rooms and we can't hear anything from the neighbour next door, all our neighbours are great, the position of the house is great, nice and secluded. We have a driveway for 2 cars which fit easily, its not at the front door and there are 2 steps which is quite difficult for me due to my mobility issues but I manage ok......now, thats the good stuff! Oh my, the management company Tilia are not great, as you all probably know you have 12 months to report defects and 'snags'. We have had a list of defects since we moved in on 24th April 21, its now Jan 22 and we still have a list of defects, some of them have been repaired but there's still at least 10 defects outstanding, the Tilia development manager on the site is horrendous, he avoids you if he sees you, he doesn't answer calls, he doesn't respond to messages, its so frustrating! We have also had a few problems with together homes (TH) management, firstly the buying process was absolutely horrendous! I have never been through anything like it, it was so stressful, the rep from TH was very difficult to deal with, just be warned, also you have to know that anything you want to change in the house you have to ask permission from TH e.g. we wanted a walk-in shower instead of the shower over the bath due to my mobility issues, so we had to ask permission first, we also wanted to board the attic for extra storage but they said no until the 12 month period was over, we will ask again in Feb. With regards to the defects, I must have sent 50+ emails to TH and its hard to get a response plus we can't go straight to Tilia, we have to report the defects to TH then they contact Tilia and Tilia then arrange the job/repair with us. Its been really tough but you have to stay strong and be a nuisance or nothing would get done, I'm sure they hate me but I don't mind because we spent a lot of money and it has to be right. We have also had a few issues with the grounds outside our house, the biggest problem is that they don't tell us what is happening, again its so frustrating, if they just communicated with us it would be much easier, I have to say it isn't the workmen on site, they are all great, so nice and polite, it's the site manager, I think he literally doesn't care about the people who live in the houses. Overall we're happy we bought the bungalow via shared ownership. We just need these last few defects sorting out and then it'll be ok. The kind of defects I am talking about are; the front door is twisted and there's a 10mm gap letting all the cold air in, the bt internet box is hanging off the wall and has been since the day we moved in, there are little things like scratches on doors which were repainted by "the snagging man" yes that is actually someone's job! So it's not over yet but we'll get there, we love the house and that's the main thing