Forget Grand Designs, although a fabulous programme and watching and listening to Kevin is a delight, it’s not what the majority of self-builders get up to in the UK!
| In the main, self-builders usually buy the land and build with a budget between £250,000 and £300,000. As a rule of thumb, a third of your money will go on land, a third on materials and a third on labour to build. | XXX |  |
Yes that’s right – the term ‘self-build’ is a bit of misnomer! The majority of people have an architect and then employ a building firm or individual tradesmen to build the property and rarely get their hands dirty until it’s time to choose the paint colours and lay the flooring.
And for those of you who think renovating is a good idea or easier – you’d be very wrong. Renovation is tough to make money out of when prices are falling or static as they typically are at the moment. Also as there have been so many shows on how to renovate a property, buyers are so obsessed with securing a home ripe for renovation they tend to pay more for it than it would be worth done up.
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XXX | So for anyone dreaming of building your own home or thinking of renovating, it shouldn’t be a dream. You can get access to finance which allows you to stay in your home while you build. You can also secure mortgages for the purchase of the land – which you can often get at below the stamp duty level – and with 15% plus deposits. Finally there are still plenty of quality builders and tradespeople around while the house building sector continues to struggle to recover, despite the Help to Buy boost. |
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