HAving a house built

rosie_drew

Hi have any of you bought some land and then had a house built?
I have about 150 thous for land and then pro b a bit for a build but I am not sure of prices.

Can you help??

Doozergirl

A house can cost anywhere upwards of £1000 per square metre to build. Where I live £150,000 would buy you a plot probably suitable for a 200 square metre house - 5 beds. So the cost of building that house would be £200,000 upwards. Obviously deoends on where you are as to the cost of land and the sort of house you'd get onto it.

Gwhiz

I'm just about to do just this. Build prices can be anything depending on the quality you want so anything from £1000-£1500 per sq m is a good guide. Suggest you get down WH Smith and start reading Build It, Self Build & Design and Homebuilding & Renovating mags.

poppysarah

Bit of forest and a tent?
Change left over.

Have you ever watched Sarah Beeny or *swoon* Kevin McCloud? and thought "that looks fun"?

rosie_drew

I am hoping to buy a small plot enough for a 3 bedroom house. I have a year to do the planning and will then put my house on the market. It's quite exciting. Shame though that there are not many plots around.

I'm looking in the somerset area in small villages and I guess so are a lot of other people.

I would love to hear from people who have done this or just starting to have a small house built.

thanks

Gwhiz wrote: »

I'm just about to do just this. Build prices can be anything depending on the quality you want so anything from £1000-£1500 per sq m is a good guide. Suggest you get down WH Smith and start reading Build It, Self Build & Design and Homebuilding & Renovating mags.

LandyAndy

poppysarah wrote: »

Bit of forest and a tent?
Change left over.

Have you ever watched Sarah Beeny or *swoon* Kevin McCloud? and thought "that looks fun"?

I've frequently watched Sarah Beeny and thought 'That looks a lot of fun';):D.

hostman

LandyAndy wrote: »

I've frequently watched Sarah Beeny and thought 'That looks a lot of fun';):D.

Or "they look a lot of fun".

googler

Suggest you grab a yellow pages or go to yell.com, and look up the 'Builder' category.

Find a few who have done this type of work in the recent past, build up a cordial relationship with them, and get an idea of the build cost on what they've done before. If you have a design of a certain size in mind, talk through the plans with them, and talk to them about it. Use these conversations to decide if these are the people you want to do business with.

You may also want to build cordial relationships with the architects and planning consultants in your county, (yellow pages or yell again) as well as the planning department at your local council.

Look on the local council's website, under 'planning' and look at recent planning applications. Often, those that are building on plots ARE the builders mentioned above, so their current projects may be ice-breakers for your conversations with them. The details on the planning applns often give you an idea of which architects and planning consultants are most active in this field too.

Hope this helps.

Phirefly

poppysarah wrote: »

Bit of forest and a tent?
Change left over.

Have you ever watched Sarah Beeny or *swoon* Kevin McCloud? and thought "that looks fun"?

Its these people though who end up actually doing it and blindly stumble through to a result. Rather than the likes of myself who has a professional in the family, undertaken years of reasearch, knows local planning inside out and posesses every self-build book & guide ever written. Knowlege of the pitfalls and an appreciation of the sheer scale of whats involved has a paralysing effect. Sometimes I wish I had the OP's approach.

poppysarah

My follow on to the comment is "if you think it looked fun then you're probably mad"

Building a house is hard work and potentially packed with disasters. You do need to take lots of advice and plan everything down to the last button.
And have bottomless pockets.

Gwhiz

poppysarah wrote: »

My follow on to the comment is "if you think it looked fun then you're probably mad"

Building a house is hard work and potentially packed with disasters. You do need to take lots of advice and plan everything down to the last button.
And have bottomless pockets.

All adventures have an element of danger - that's what makes them exciting