Nice house, fewer snags than expected, helpful site managers

We moved in to a 3 bedroom house in Horsham on 31st June - a year end for Linden, so expected quite a few snags or things not finished as per other reviews. We have had some snags, mostly minor things like a bit of missing paint under the banisters, the garage door wouldn't lock as it was wonkey, and a few scratches to things around the house.

The builders on site got all of the bigger things out of the way very quickly (as well as some things like the fitting on our patio doors that they noticed and I didn't), and whilst we still find small things and have a few things that we are waiting on, we are pretty happy with how things have gone.

I'm not a builder or tradesman, but to me the house seems to be good quality. The fixtures and fittings are good, the floors don't creak, sound doesn't travel from the bathrooms more than it should etc. My measure is how the house compares to the show house (as that should be the quality found in all of the houses), and I'd say ours is at least as good as the show houses we saw. We've been in a little under two months, and so far I'm happy.

The thing that has made by far the biggest difference as far as customer service goes is the level of customer service provided by the two customer facing builders on site. They have been really helpful from day one, and have made the whole process of moving into a new home a pleasant one. They clearly take pride in what they do and in giving excellent customer service. As a small example, site watered our lawn for the first week whilst we got settled in and did the first cut a few weeks later. A bigger one - we found out when we moved in that the part the builders have to do to get our phone line in hadn't been done. The site manager was very apologetic, owned up to the issue right away (rather than waiting for OpenReach to come out and find it which is what I hear often happens), and pulled some strings with them to get the paperwork done much faster than normal. The result was that with a helpful OpenReach engineer who luckily had the tools and training to do the bit that had been missed, I was able to keep my original appointment for two days after I moved in and get everything set up as planned. Some problems will happen when you buy a new build, but how they are handled makes a big difference, and in this case I don't think they could have done any better.

To anyone wondering what the aftercare will be like, I'd first find out if the builders will still be on site for a while after your completion date, and then try to meet them. Anecdotally, not all site managers are nearly as good as the ones we've had. Customer services aren't awful, but I wouldn't want to rely on them to get things done in a hurry.

My motivation for writing this (in case anyone is wondering) is that after reading quite a few bad reviews we were very hesitant about buying a new home. We knocked on doors and spoke to some people who had already moved in which was reassuring and so we decided to go ahead. My experience has been much more positive than the reviews I'd read beforehand (which makes sense as a negative experience is much more likely to motivate people to write about it).