Our Purchaser's View of The Dowlings

We caught up with one of our clients this week who have now been living in one of our new homes at The Dowlings, Goodworth Clatford (near Andover) for the past 6 months to find out how they have been settling in.

What are the stand out features of your brand new Hazeley home?

We’ve had fun doing something different and it’s been nice to put our own mark on what is essentially a blank canvas.  We like the clean lines and uncluttered feeling of our new home and it’s really refreshing to have a modern looking kitchen with a good-sized fridge and good quality Neff appliances.  We’re really pleased too that Hazeley were able to help us add fitted wardrobes to two other bedrooms before we moved in.

The house is really warm too, compared to our previous Grade II listed home, so we will really reap the benefits of this in the Winter with lower fuel bills.

It made a real difference having fitted carpets throughout as part of the sale as these can be a major expense.

Would you buy a Hazeley new home again?

Yes we would, our home is roomy, well constructed and well fitted out.  It's spacious, but doesn’t feel too big and has a real homely feel to it.

If there have been any problems, and there really haven’t been, Hazeley has been on the phone straight away and it's nice to know that a listening ear is just a phone call away.

We needed a minor repair to the ceiling and Hazeley insisted that the whole ceiling was painted as a touch up would have looked too obvious.

Where did you relocate from?

We’re both in our seventies and originally from Worcestershire.  We lived in our last house for over 23 years.  It was Grade II listed with a garden of around half an acre and was even featured in the television programme ‘Escape to the Country’.

Why did you decide to move home?

The main driver for us was to be closer to our family.

Why did you choose to settle in Hampshire and specifically Goodworth Clatford?

We originally started looking along the M4 corridor and then switched our search to the Whitchurch and Overton areas, where we found the A303 and how this gave us easy access both East and West.

Goodworth Clatford really found us!

We wanted a village location, but it had to have things to do, so not a hamlet, but a large village.  Deciding one day to look in the Andover area, we met David Smith from Myddelton & Major who showed us The Dowlings at Goodworth Clatford and the rest is history!

To be perfectly honest, we had no intention of buying a brand new home, but wanted a home that didn’t need a lot doing to it.  Top of our tick list for our next home were: village location, reasonable sized garden and little refurbishment.  We saw a beautiful thatched cottage, but just couldn’t face the refurbishments.

Rightly or wrongly, we had made the assumption that new homes don’t have big gardens, but this was completely turned on its head when we visited Hazeley’s scheme at The Dowlings.  All the homes had sizeable gardens and we loved the open plan kitchen/dining/living area, it was extra space that we hadn’t had before and that coupled with a separate lounge meant there were no longer any arguments about TV channels!

We went into the village too and talked to the local people and visited the village hall, which is a hub of activity.  With its pubs, primary school and shop/post office we could tell Goodworth Clatford was a thriving village.

Since moving here getting involved in the local clubs has really helped us to get to know people, it's nice to be able to recognise and say ‘Hi’ to other locals when we’re down in the village.  We have joined the amateur dramatics and arts clubs, WI and golf club and hope to enlist with the gardening society too.  We were keen too to continue our involvement with the National Trust, which has been easy with Mottisfont nearby, plus, as a retired teacher we’re hoping to offer our services to the local primary school too.

What advice would you give to anyone in a similar situation?

Take the plunge!

It can be a bit daunting at first, because what you’re used to, friends, etc., are no longer on tap and you can’t spend all your time with family, they don’t want you on the doorstep.  You have to be prepared to go out and find it, to get involved and be patient.  Rome wasn’t built in a day!

Being that much nearer to family means we see our grandchildren more often and we are going to have all the family together for the first time in more years than we can remember at Christmas.  Up until now we’ve always been too far away.

We don’t miss the constant cycle of maintenance/DIY that an older home needs, we just don’t need the hassle or inconvenience of having to install new bathrooms or kitchens.

We think you have to accept that not all your furniture will necessarily fit either in terms of style or size in a new home, but we’ve had great fun sourcing new pieces.  Naturally, we got rid of a lot of stuff before we moved, took things to car boot sales and so on, but what we have now is what we need.

To ensure their privacy, our clients have specifically asked us not to publish their names.