Buying land and building a house

sapstar

Anyone has experience buying land and building a house? I have no idea about building, but I see there are many companies selling prefabricated houses these days and installing them and a lower cost. Is this really cost effective compared to building? How is the quality like?

What is involved in building a custom house? I understand I may have to buy the land outright, but will I get mortgage for building (prefabricated or otherwise)?

ProDave

Self building a house is a massive subject and how cost effective is determined a lot by where you are.

There is a whole forum you might want to take a look at, call buildHub.  google it.

Speaking as a second time self builder.

canaldumidi

Use duckduckgo. Lots of specialist websites with information.

brewthebear

Land is like gold dust at present getting trades really difficult, waiting lists as long as your arm. Prices for materials are mostly double what they was .
I know have built but that was five years ago.
Would not go down that route now with how things are. A neighbour is building and he has has problems galore trying to get materials and tradesmen. He says he wished he,d never started and worried he will run out of money before it’s done, he,s stressed to the max.

ComicGeek

sapstar said:

Anyone has experience buying land and building a house? I have no idea about building, but I see there are many companies selling prefabricated houses these days and installing them and a lower cost. Is this really cost effective compared to building? How is the quality like?

The benefit of prefabricated houses is that they can be built much quicker on site than traditional methods, once the parts have been built in the factory. On some projects the speed of building can equate to reduced costs - on other projects it doesn't.

These days there are so many prefab options available that you can't lump them all together. One site we're working on at the moment has SIPs panels, prefab metal frame, prefab timber frame (but not SIPs panels), and traditional masonry construction all on the same estate - you wouldn't be able to tell the difference when they're finished. The use of prefabricated options enable them to keep building at a fast pace with the current materials and labour shortages.

spoovy

We looked at land + prefab in the SE but found that the high cost of any land with planning permission and in a decent location meant it didn't save us any money (or very little anyway, nowhere near enough to justify the hassle).
A real shame as prefabs can look really good these days, and cheap.