Address:

Marketing Suite

20 Kennet Street

Reading, Berkshire

RG1 4AA,

United Kingdom

The company

Crest Nicholson is a UK developer that creates housing as well as mixed use communities. Some of the main priorities of their projects are sustainability and affordability.

With offices based in Chertsey their existing and future developments are located in several towns in the the South. Some of the major locations Include London, Bristol, Reading, Bath.

Q2 is comprised of modern 1 and 2 bed apartments. Exra features of the development include:

• 2 top floor penthouse apartments
• a roof garden
• underground parking (and bicycle storage)

The ground floor will contain some commercial units, however the licencing restricts any fast-food or bar type establishemnts.

In accordance to the existing laws part of the building is allocated to social housing. However these flats will have their own separate entrance and will be excluded from access to the roof garden.

View brochure (PDF)

Full description of EasyBuy benefits

In these hard times buying your first home can be a tedious and frustrating process. However as the credit crunch affects buyers, as well as developers, the later are now trying to easy the way to ownership, especially for first time buyers, with initiatives like Crest Nicholson's EasyBuy scheme.

Below are some of the benefits of participation:

• You own 100% of the property - no extra rent, or buy out limits

• Legal fees up to a certain amount paid for you - if you use suggested solicitors, about £900 for the Q2 development in Reading

• No stamp duty - it's all taken care of

• No area or age restrictions

• First time buyers only

• Mortgage arrangement fees paid for - if you use the recommended mortgage advisor

• 5 years interest free, further 5 at a low percent (for the Q2 development it was around 3%)

• No early repayment restrictions - pay off any time before the 10 years are up.

The development has started accorind to schedule on the 1st of September. Thanks to the good weather first weeks have seen noticable progress - with the foundations being done, and followed by build work almost to the first floor level.

So far the development has been moving forward steadily and Crest's staff has been reasuring the buyers that the build is still ahead of schedule. There were plans for the show flat to open at the end of March, though the dates still need to be confirmed.

As to the economic downturn we are all facing at the moment, although the Q2 seems to be not affected by any deleys or cancellation there are certainly some downsides. For one thing we just had our flat valued, and obviously we were expecting the valuation to go below the asking price as with all the property sales nowadays. However Going from a bit over 220 thousand to 195 thousand is quite a slump.

At the moment we are looking into a renegotiation of the sale price, so if you have been in a similar situation, any comments would help.