Construction Time Again: an Introduction to Self-Build
Despite the recession, “self-build” houses are still popular. Why? Because they’ve always offered better value for money than simply buying a home. Hold on, what precisely is “self-build”? It’s a house you build yourself. Not quite literally by yourself, but you put yourself in the position as planner, foreman, architect of your property and allow professional workers do the task you order them to do. “Self-build” is pretty much recession-proof due to the relatively low costs involved (relative to buying a property) - in point of fact, there are more self-builders in the UK than the total number of homes being developed by any single developer. The intention of self-build is to create a house to your exact specifications, not a boiler-plate design that commercial developers use.
I’m sure you’re formulating this thought right about now: “I’m no developer”. The pleasant news is that self-build doesn’t mean you inevitably have to dive in with the actual development (as a matter of fact, only around 5% of self-builders actually take a role in the actual construction of the property). Even when it comes to design, quite often this is delegated to a professional designer.. Self-build, generally, is about you articulating (in laymen’s terms), what you require to the property designer - who then creates a plan dependent on your requirements. This design then becomes the blueprint the developers work to. See? You don’t need to have any proactive participation in self-build. Having said that, the Do It Yourself enthusiast can use self-build as a chance to save some notes by helping out with the aspects of self-build they have experience in - it’s your call as to how much participation you want during the build.
Self-build sounds expensive, but actually it’s in the main cheaper than buying an already developed home of identical specifications (roughly a third cheaper). Not only that, self-built properties fetch a good price too - up to 25% higher than the actual build cost, so self-build can be simply an investment, rather than a place to live.
You must make sure the team of workers you choose are 100% competent and that they develop well together. No doubt you will want builders with lots of experience, particularly with specific types of building machinery, such as floor saws, wall saws, Husqvarna disc cutters, masonry saws and stihl saws. With a skillful gang, you are also maximizing the safety levels of the construction.
This article is simply an introduction to self-build, and I trust it will encourage those of you who are disheartened by the thought of running a task of this kind of scale. It needn’t take up all of your time, and you won’t need any specific skills, but hire carefully, and you will need to carefully work out the budget of the project.
