Self-Build Your Way out of the Recession
20 June 2009Despite the recession, “self-build” homes are still popular. Why? Because they’ve always provided better value for money than simply buying a house. Hold on, what exactly is “self-build”? It’s a house you build yourself. Not quite literally by yourself, but you set yourself in the position as foreman, architect, planner of your property and allow skilled workers do the job you tell them to do. “Self-build” is pretty much recession-proof due to the relatively low costs involved (compared to buying a home) - in fact, the army of “self-builders” in the UK outnumbers the amount of properties being developed by any professional developer. The purpose of self-build is to create a property to your exact specifications, not a template that the large developers work to.
I know what you’re thinking: “I haven’t a clue about how to build a house”. The pleasant news is that getting involved with a self-build project doesn’t mean you inevitably have to get stuck in with the actual development (as a matter of fact, just 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, mostly, is about you saying (in plain English), what you require to the property designer - who then creates a plan based on your necessities. This plan then becomes the draft the developers work to. Now do you see? It’s not required to have any active involvement in self-build. Even so, the DIY fantatic can use self-build as an opportunity to save some cash by contributing toward the tasks of self-build they have experience in - it’s your choice how much participation you want during the build.
Self-build sounds expensive, but in reality it’s by and large cheaper than purchasing an already developed house of identical specifications (roughly a third cheaper). That’s not all, self-built homes sell very well too - as much as 25% higher than the development costs, so self-build can be simply an investment, rather than a house to live in.
You must ensure the squad of workers you choose are total professionals and that they work well together. No doubt you will want builders with experience of some rather potentially dangerous machinery used in building, such as block and slab splitters, ics diamond chainsaws, floor saws, and wood saws. Not only do they want to be safe with such machinery, they of course must do their job well too!
This article is merely an introduction to the concept of building a property yourself, and I hope it will inspire those of you who are put off by the thought of planning a task of this kind of scale. It needn’t be time-intensive, and you won’t need house building / designing skills, but hire carefully, and you will need to cautiously work out the overall cost of the project.
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