Buying a second home with Persimmon
Abbie Hawkins knows pretty much all there is to know about owning a Persimmon home – a sales advisor with the East Midlands team, she’s also bought not one but two Persimmon homes of her own.
From seller to buyer
My name is Abigail Hawkins, but everyone knows me as Abbie or Abs. I live with my partner of 9 years, Joshua Watson, along with our 2 dogs and cat.
I’ve been a sales advisor with Persimmon for what will be four years this October, and am currently working at The Maples development in Weston.
Not only do I work at Persimmon, we have also bought two Persimmon properties ourselves! After buying our first Persimmon home we thought the customer service was great, so when it was time for a move we purchased and reserved our second home with Persimmon, a five-bedroom Warwick, in August 2022. We moved in on 2nd December 2022.
We only had a few minor snags in our previous property, and a few in this one – every home is different, and all of those snags are being rectified.
"We were also able to choose our Finishing Touches remotely on the new Persimmon portal which is ever so handy."
Going through the buying process
The field sales manager (and my colleague!) Ellie took our reservation and went through a reservation checklist with me which was a delight. We had our previous home to sell and found some first time buyers to purchase it, so we had to hand over a memorandum of sale to confirm the purchase.
This all happened so smoothly! We were given constant updates from both the site team and admin team at Persimmon East Midlands. We were also able to choose our Finishing Touches remotely on the new Persimmon portal which is ever so handy. It shows the build stage, and has a chat system for any questions we had.
We then signed and sent all documents to our panelled solicitors who were able to get us to exchange after a few months.
Coming up to the new home demonstration, the team worked around my schedule and tailored appointments to when Joshua and I could attend. Due to work commitments and Joshua working away five days a week, this was really helpful and we were very grateful.
After the demonstration, the majority of our issues were sorted before we moved in. The site team were really accommodating and considerate, even pulling strings to make sure they had the works outstanding completed on days where either myself or Joshua were off work.
"We thought buying another house would be stressful, but the whole team made the process seamless."
Happily settled
Now that we’ve moved in, we’ve been handed over to Customer Care who are doing a great job making sure any further works are being done and always contacting us with full updates.
We thought buying another house would be stressful, but the whole team made the process seamless.
I would say I was treated like any other customer - treated with respect, and always got updates as and when needed. Even to this day, if I have any issues and report them, the site and customer care teams get into sorting the issues as quickly as possible.
Our favourite things about our home have to be the yellow brick and render, along with the fancy window/glass design as this gives the home more character.
I would certainly recommend Persimmon and have done so in the past – I actually recommended them to my sister, who then reserved a home in the Hampton Gardens development. It’s always good sign if Persimmon’s own employees buy a Persimmon home, let alone two!
