has anyone ever bought a bit of land a built their own house?

chloo

as the title really.

we have saving up for a mortage but where we live (south east) is bloody expensive.

i mean a 2 bed flat is £280,000!!!
a three bed house is around £315,000!!!

we dont want to live in a flat as we want pets and to use the garden and to have children.

we often see some land up for sale with planning permission.

what kind of costs are needed to buy this land?

can you go to the bank for a mortage?

has anyone done it and been sucessful?

thank you

x

lincroft1710

Building plots for single dwellings are available, but often with detailed planning permission rather than outline. Those which would be big enough for a decent size garden, tend to have pp for 4/5 bed property and in a reasonable area are usually going to be in excess of £100K. There are several "build your home" type books and magazines available which should give some idea of costs and how to finance as well as frequently encountered problems. The magazines may well have ads for suitable land.

sirmosh

You're going to need a lot of actual cash to do it since you're unlikely to find any one who will let you borrow enough money to buy a plot and build a house since you're probably talking £200k+.

lincroft1710

This was posted to another thread, seems good info

Fuzzyness wrote: »

rightmove have plots with planning permission for sale listed. you can always do you own research. decide where you would like to live and then get out there and do some door knocking and research. have a look on aerial photos and see what property's may have an area of garden that you could potentially build something on. it may take longer but it could be cheaper rather than paying for a plot that already has planning permission. have a look on ebuild.co.uk

its a great self build resource and they have a forum and you should get some more pointers there about sourcing a plot.

ognum

I have done this but not in the UK and not with a mortgage.

It is hard work, requires you to be available to make decisions and keeping to a budget is difficult, costs can run away with you.

Be prepared for it to take twice as long and cost twice as much as you are first quoted!

DVardysShadow

It is a way of getting the house to the spec you want. But as a means of getting a cheap property, those days are long past.

shamac

We have done this. We used the equity in our house to buy the land and then rented, we could only afford to do this as the mortgage for the build was released in stages so it grew towards the end of the build. We moved in when the house was 90% ready and did the rest of the work whilst living there.

If you can't cover the costs of part mortgage plus rent you can do the caravan option, wouldn't want to do it in the winter but wouldn't be too bad for a summer build.

Questions to ask yourself, do you have lots of spare time? You need to make so many decisions and do so much running about.

Do you have any contacts in the trade? Know a good plumber/electrician/joiner etc if you do then they can often recommend the others which saves time/money/heartache.

Are you good at budgeting and watching costs? Just the VAT return alone takes hours and a mountain of paperwork!!

It is NOT the easy option, it is super hard work, very stressful, give it a year of your life. BUT we paid £135k in total for our house and it's worth £300ish so its got it's rewards!

Good luck !

SuzieSue

shamac wrote: »

We have done this. We used the equity in our house to buy the land and then rented, we could only afford to do this as the mortgage for the build was released in stages so it grew towards the end of the build. We moved in when the house was 90% ready and did the rest of the work whilst living there.

If you can't cover the costs of part mortgage plus rent you can do the caravan option, wouldn't want to do it in the winter but wouldn't be too bad for a summer build.

Questions to ask yourself, do you have lots of spare time? You need to make so many decisions and do so much running about.

Do you have any contacts in the trade? Know a good plumber/electrician/joiner etc if you do then they can often recommend the others which saves time/money/heartache.

Are you good at budgeting and watching costs? Just the VAT return alone takes hours and a mountain of paperwork!!

It is NOT the easy option, it is super hard work, very stressful, give it a year of your life. BUT we paid £135k in total for our house and it's worth £300ish so its got it's rewards!

Good luck !

How long ago was that?

POPPYOSCAR

Yes we did it, but it was some time ago.

The mortgage money was released in stages throughout the build. Have to say it was the most stressful 2 years of our lives, but now we have a house and land that we could never have afforded to buy, and hopefully will see us through our retirement when we sell up, even in this economic climate.

shamac

How long ago was that?

It was about 6 years ago, we were lucky as the land was a bargain as it had to be an eco-build so price of land was set to attract people to build.