Self Building - Any experiences?

JQ.

I'm sorry, but I can't believe you can buy land with detailed planning consent for a family home for £20,000, never mind £5,000. Got any links?

Personally I'd have thought your biggest hurdle would have been sourcing a suitable affordable plot, but you seem quite confident on that front.

Your next biggest hurdle will be funding the development. A bank will only provide a very small proportion of your build cost, where will the rest of the money come from? I would say the first thing you need to do is sit down with an IFA and assess what level of funding you can actually get based on your personal cicumstances.

I've just done a quick Google on "accellerator mortgage", where it says you can get up to 90% LTV on the land and up to 90% LTV on the build costs. :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:
If you're basing you're hopes on that, then I can assure you there is no way any bank will lend 90% on a speculative residential development in the current financial climate. I estimate you'd be lucky to get 60% LTV, but I'm not an IFA, so perhaps someone with more detailed experience can clarify.

sunshinetours

I would agree 60% is more likely - my own mortgage company does up to this level. Rates are slightly hogher than traditional mortgages also

jozbo

Good for you - if you can get the land and planning sorted. Not the easiest route to home ownership but I'm sure the most gratifying. Sure there are lots of books on the subject following grand designs etc?

YoungBusinessman

Well this is what im looking into just now. Around 80% of work will be done by me/mates. Just got to be realistic about it as i have alot of work on currently plus business debts. Looking into it, much better financially.

shamac

We have self-built, a sustainable build in Northumberland. We had to pay cash for our land which was 25k with detailed PP, not sure many banks will lend on the land. We had staged payments with the mortgage, they paid out after 3 stages each of which had to be certified as completed by our architect, we then received the money and paid the trades.

Have you considered where you will live while you are building? We didn't do the caravan thing as we had young children but found it v.expensive towards the end paying out rent and a mortgage for several months.

It is REALLY, REALLY hard work and basically took over our lives for 18 months, there are a million decisions to make, many of which we now regret so I would say plan and overplan!

Financially, we paid 130k plus land plus the rent we paid and the house is worth about 300kish but I have to say, I wouldn't do it again with as much involvement (did it all ourselves to save money). It would really help if you have solid contacts in one or more trades, we didn't and had nightmare plumbers AND electricians.

Good luck, it's a journey!!;)

jozbo

saw this mag recommended on another thread - lots of good advice on self build here by the looks of it http://www.homebuilding.co.uk/advice/beginners

fairynuff_3

Be very careful if you see a piece of land that cheap, it may be agricultural land which doesn't actually have any OPP/DPP etc attached to it. This is quite common, the landowner/agent sells off chunks of a plot in the hope that one day, in the distant future, they will get planning permission. You can easily check for OPP etc at the relevant local authority planning portal for free.

PasturesNew

Even in Cornwall there's a plot under £38k with full planning permission for a 3 bed house, so it's not incredulous that cheaper areas wouldn't have cheaper plots.

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-25492966.html

Fuzzyness

BigAlC wrote: »

Hi all,

I (we) are FTB's in a market which in my opinion is full of over inflated unreaslistically priced houses. Apologies if I have offended any vendors on here, but this is just my thoughts.

To business though. We are seriously looking in to self builds as a way of gaining the best house possible for a reaslistic price. The benefits that come with it are many in terms of CGT and SDLT to name a few.

It seems like a great way to get our dream house to start a family and with things being the way they are, it appears like it is also cheaper, and possibly - should we ever move and sell, more profitable to self build.

We are wondering however if anyone has any experience of doing this on here?

The digging I have done has shown me that as fair as I can gather I would be better off getting an accellerator mortgage which pays in advance of getting work done. However, I am wondering how these get paid, do we pay as soon as we accept mortgage, or do we start to pay it all back when the building is complete and we are moving in?

I've still got a lot of reading to do on all of this, but I thought I would start the ball rolling on here in terms of gathering information from people that might have been there done that, or are also at the same stage as me and are willing to share and exchange knowledge.

Thanks all.

i've done it. well i've paid a builder to build the house but my wife and i worked with an architect to design it and get planning permission etc. our plot was a knock down and rebuild of my wife's family home. she's inherited half the house when her mum died so we bought the other half of her sister (approximatley 95k).

we built a 2,200 square foot house for 165k which equates to £75 a square foot build cost. The house was fullly decorated with all fixtures and fittings i.e curtains, blinds, door handles etc included in this sum.

in terms of you query about accelerator mortgages, they split this into two. the sum for the purchasee of the land and then the rest for the build. when you take out the mortgage they give the money for the land and you start paying this back at this time. you only get the money for the build once you've got planning permisison. from memorary we got our money in five stages to pay the builder.

have you had a look on ebuild.co.uk/community

its a very helpful self build message board and website that loads of advice and more people who've done it.