When you move into a brand new home, do you simply unpack your bags and start living?

Or do you spend months getting the builders back to correct niggling problems all over the house?

Although the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) and consumer groups have criticised builders for leaving too many defects behind, a recent survey - compiled by the builders - claims many of the old problems have been sorted out.

The improvement may also be linked to a sharp drop in builders' output to a 40-year low, of barely 100,000 homes a year; in an industry operating at barely half its normal capacity, 'cowboy' firms should have been squeezed out.

According to The National New Home Customer Satisfaction Survey, operated by the Home Builders Federation (HBF), which represents 300 member firms producing 80 per cent of new homes in England and Wales, some 88 per cent of respondents to its sixth annual survey say they are satisfied with the overall quality of their new home.

A similarly high proportion (86 per cent) would recommend their builder to a friend, and 84 per cent are `very or fairly' happy with the service received in the buying process.

The HBF says its findings are based on replies from nearly 37,000 purchasers, a response rate of more than 55 per cent.

National builders given a five-star rating on quality for customer satisfaction include Barratt, Cala, Lovell, Redrow, and retirement housing specialist McCarthy & Stone.

All these firms, along with Crest Nicholson, get a five-star rating from buyers happy to recommend them to a friend.

HBF executive chairman Stewart Baseley says: "These results are truly outstanding and testament to the efforts made by our industry to deliver ever-increasing satisfaction levels to new home buyers.

"All the evidence we now have demonstrates that as an industry we are delivering in the overwhelming majority of cases the type of product our customers want, in a manner with which they are satisfied.

"These results are a credit to our industry."