The House That £100k Built.....

maddermanblue1_2

On the BBC, I thought the programme is a non starter as £100k builds does not come with land. Bit of a misleading title.
The latest episode featured a couple who built a house in their parents back garden for free. In the end s they spent about £85k on building a house on free land.
What are your thoughts on this?

Mistermeaner

programme was pants.

labour and materials to build a house are not that expensive - give or take you can spend as much or little as you want.

Problem is planning and land - and in some circumstances connection to utilities.

PasturesNew

All these programmes have a con. It's like the "tiny house" movement ... yeah, Americans building caravans that look like sheds. We could all just buy an old mobile home and plonk it down if we were allowed to live in them like yanks can.

£100k ... yeah, they usually get free land, or the bloke'll own a building company so do all the labour himself and use his trade discounts. And - does anybody actually watch/count/time what they really do and audit the accounts? No.

They're not going to tell the telly "Ooops, we spent £160k in the end ..... and the free land's worth £200k"

Cornucopia

I quite like the programme. Anything that takes an architectural view of the topic, rather than the dozens focused on DIY or house buying and selling is okay with me.

I agree that they could have found a more realistic, less sensational title.

The only thing I really dislike about it are the two presenters. Somehow Kevin McCloud (Grand Designs) manages to do the whole architectural appreciation in an accessible, easy-going way. The two guys that present £100k house need some kind of physical chastisement - especially Piers. He's got to be the most patronising person on UK TV, and there's a fair bit of competition.

I think it's good that they've tried to go a different way (money-wise) than Grand Designs. Some of the projects there are pure flights of fancy for most people, costing upwards of £500k. I can't believe that there aren't genuine £100k-£150k projects being done in the UK, particularly in Scotland (where land is cheaper) and Wales (where there are more rights to settle on land).

princeofpounds

The architectural stuff is really interesting and informative. The rest of it I could take or leave.


As pointed out it costs peanuts (relatively-speaking) to actually build even a normal family house anywhere. OK, not 100k, but not a different order of magnitude.


So the thing stopping most people from housing themselves cheaply and using the money to pay for retirement/schooling/healthcare/shopping/life rather than line the pocket of a landlord is basically what we are prohibited from doing with our own land.

Cornucopia

princeofpounds wrote: »

The architectural stuff is really interesting and informative. The rest of it I could take or leave.

As pointed out it costs peanuts (relatively-speaking) to actually build even a normal family house anywhere. OK, not 100k, but not a different order of magnitude.

So the thing stopping most people from housing themselves cheaply and using the money to pay for retirement/schooling/healthcare/shopping/life rather than line the pocket of a landlord is basically what we are prohibited from doing with our own land.

Yes... but Scotland, Wales and France are not so far, or so bad that you wouldn't choose those countries for a much easier and more beneficial self-build experience. So, I think there is slightly more here putting people off, and I think the missing ingredients are time and hassle.

There's also the question of the market value of the property after completion - are you going to potentially get back what you've spent, as you would expect with a "normal" house. If you cut corners on spec, build-style, architecture or 101 other things, is that going to detract from market price, or worse, saleability.

You very rapidly descend into those practical considerations that stoke the English housing market.

FWIW, I think it's high time to relax the planning rules in favour of self-build projects. However, I'm not clear in my own mind what is required. I'm thinking about:-

- A right to build on a "large" plot that was originally agricultural or woodlands (but not protected), as long as the footprint of the development is less than 1% of the area of the plot, and the building is sited no less than 50m from its boundary. (However that implies significant potential costs to connect utilities).

- A right to build on "in-fill" plots in existing residential areas. (This is already quite a good route to planning permission).

- A right to exploit clean brown-field sites that have been vacant for an extended period.

- An obligation for local authorities to make available X plots of self-build land per year, at a cost limited by covenants requiring only self-build, certain eco credentials of the build, and no sub-letting.

princeofpounds

However, I'm not clear in my own mind what is required. I'm thinking about:-

All interesting ideas. I think two important principles would be


- A focus on the quality of what would be built (in the widest sense of the word - would include external effects, not just the quality of the build) rather than whether it can be built at all.


- A focus on communities determining where housing can go rather than whether it can be built at all.


and I also think that anything that tips the balance away from the only people able to get planning permission through being identikit Barratt-style mass box builders is good.


I don't oppose all restrictions on building numbers, but I do think the balance has gone too far when people who can afford land, labour and bricks, and yet cannot afford to house themselves anywhere near that price, are essentially forced to become wageslaves to the oligopolistic owners of housing capital.


So I am drawn to concepts where everyone is allowed on more free terms to build at least a house to home themselves once in their life.

Jonbvn

Cornucopia wrote: »

....especially Piers. He's got to be the most patronising person on UK TV, and there's a fair bit of competition.

Oh come on. You know MSE Martin easily has that tile sewn up.:money:

Cornucopia

Jonbvn wrote: »

Oh come on. You know MSE Martin easily has that tile sewn up.:money:

Nope. Not having that. Martin is always helpful and well-meaning. His only failing in my opinion is talking a bit too fast. But we all know why he does that - it's because the media constantly uses "time" as an excuse to shut people up.

The people who present "house" programmes have a tendency to being patronising and annoying, but Piers is well ahead of a pack that includes Kirstie Allsop.

Cornucopia

princeofpounds wrote: »

I don't oppose all restrictions on building numbers, but I do think the balance has gone too far when people who can afford land, labour and bricks, and yet cannot afford to house themselves anywhere near that price, are essentially forced to become wageslaves to the oligopolistic owners of housing capital.

I'm not quite on that page. Although that could be because I've never really been a wageslave, either in fact or in attitude.

My take on it is that a lot of people are complaining about house prices, often because their constraints coincide with an over-heated local market. If they were able to think a little wider, then they might solve the issue, and that solution might include a self-build project, albeit one that sits in a Welsh forest, as in-fill development on a Scottish housing estate or as a £1 refurbishment purchase in a Northern terraced street.

The thing about the US "tiny house" innovation that is interesting is that (a) Americans traditionally aspire to enormous houses, so it's good to turn that on it's head, and (b) it presumably fits in with their planning model (and not necessarily with ours), although IIUC, living on woodlands in the UK has a similar exemption for moveable homes.

So I am drawn to concepts where everyone is allowed on more free terms to build at least a house to home themselves once in their life.

Yes - I like that idea.

I would also allow certain types of projects to enter into a long-term lease for the land, rather than buying it, which would split the benefits of ownership more equitably between land-owner and land-occupant.

Overall, I aspire to self-build, and if I were faced with the prospect of paying £500k or more for a basic family-sized house, as many people are, I would be so tempted by some of these (mainly the more modern, less "lodgey" ones:

http://mountainlodgehomes.co.uk/properties/

princeofpounds

I would be so tempted by some of these (mainly the more modern, less "lodgey" ones:

great site. Shows just how silly it is we all overpay simply to house ourselves.