Extreme Do it Yourself - Building Your next Home
Self-build is a term that is becoming ever-popular in the housing market. Hold on, what exactly is “self-build”? It’s a property you build yourself. Not quite literally by yourself, but you set yourself in the position as architect, planner, foreman of your property and allow trained workers do the job you tell them to do. “Self-build” is pretty much recession-proof due to the relatively low costs involved (relative to buying a property) - in fact, there are more self-builders in the UK than the total amount of properties being built by any single developer. The intention of self-build is to produce a property to your precise specifications, not a boiler-plate design that commercial developers use.
Already you’re probably thinking: “I can’t plan, and manage a house build”. The good news is that getting involved with a self-build project doesn’t mean you necessarily have to dive in with the actual development (in point of fact, only around 5% of self-builders actually take a role in the actual construction of the property). Even the design aspects are often finalised by a professional designer. Self-build, by and large, is about you articulating (in plain English), what you require to the house designer - who then develops a plan based on your requirements. This design then becomes the blueprint the developers follow. Now do you see? You don’t need to have any proactive engagement in self-build. Having said all that, the DIY fantatic can use self-build as a chance to save some wonga by contributing toward the tasks of self-build they have experience in - it’s your choice how much engagement you want during the build.
Self-build sounds expensive, but actually it’s more often than not cheaper than buying an already built house of identical specifications (roughly a third cheaper). Not only that, self-built homes sell very well too - as much as 25% higher than the development costs, so you can view self-build also as a means to invest your money, rather than just a place to live
You must ensure the team of workers you choose are total professionals and that they can develop as a group. No doubt you will want workers with experience of some rather potentially dangerous machinery used in construction, such as Masonry saws, block and slab splitters, power / disc cutters, floor saws, and wood saws. Not only do they want to be safe with such equipment, they of course need to do their job well too!
This article is simply an introduction to the concept of developing a home yourself, and I hope it will inspire those of you who are perhaps a little daunted by such projects. It needn’t be time-intensive, and you won’t need house building / designing skills, but you will need to be particular as to who you hire, and you will need to cautiously work out the budget of the project.
