Homesearch
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FOR many people, buying a new home involves writing a wish list of things you can’t possibly live without, trawling all the estate agents before realising nothing out there fits your specification, and then deciding which things you actually CAN live without and are willing to compromise on.
But, if you’re not keen on compromising, why not build your dream home? You can design the house exactly how you want it and will get more land for your money.
The average self-build project costs £147,000, and last year around 35,000 people designed and built their own homes in Britain. So how hard can it be?
Self-building does not mean you have to don a hard hat and do it all yourself – you can just buy the land and employ a builder to manage the project. However much involvement you decide to take on, there are a number of websites offering advice and guidance.
A good starting point for self-builders is www.buildstore.co.uk . It offers advice for all aspects of self-build, from finding land to getting finance and buying materials. There’s even a message board so you can exchange horror stories with other self-builders. And with the specialist self-build mortgages such as the Accelerator available online they’ll be no more living in a caravan on site - these mortgages give you the funds you need ahead of every stage of the build and allows you to borrow up to 95% of the costs of land and 95% of the costs of the build.
The website is also home to Plotsearch, which maintains the National Building Plot Register. This contains details of over 5,500 plots of land, renovations and conversions.
Many people talk about a dream home and www.buildthedream.co.uk aims to help make it a reality. The website is in association with builders merchants Travis Perkins and while it promotes their products and stores it also has a number of useful features. The project cost estimator is good – just type in your location, number of floors, house size in square metres and other details and it will calculate how much your project should set you back.
The website www.self-build.co.uk has a step-by-step navigation, which explains how to find land, finance and insure your project and suggests ways to get help with the design. It is the website for the Self Build magazine and has a great search archive of features and readers’ homes that featured in the publication during the last two years. The site also has an Ask Our Expert section through which you can email specific queries to the panel.
www.ebuild.co.uk is made up of a number of databases, all containing useful information for building your own home. Search through the UK building plots database, exhibitions guide, self-build advice and groups as well as directories of architects and builders, and related discussion forums.
It’s reported that the biggest challenge when embarking on a self-build project is finding a suitable plot of land. In which case, www.selfbuild123.co.uk is a must-visit site. The section on land is very comprehensive.
www.selfbuildit.co.uk is a fantastically honest site, written in a chatty style with informative articles and a very comprehensive contents page. The author of the site has put up his own self-build story, which is written from the heart and has some advice that only someone who has been there can give! It also contains the all-important information on how you can reclaim the VAT on most materials purchased for your house with links to the Customs and Excise site.
There are a few more specialist websites you may need. When you are starting out, sites such as www.perfectplot.co.uk and www.plotfinder.net can help you find land for building on. And to find an architect in your area go to www.architecture.com - the Royal Institute of British Architects Clients Advisory Service.
www.segalselfbuild.co.uk details the popular Segal Method for building your own home. Developed in the 1960s, it’s a simple, eco-friendly wood-framed house kit. Priced from £34,000 it is worth a look when doing your initial research.