Self build

[DarthVadersdaughter]

Can anyone tell me their experience of doing a self build, please?

We've always talked about it as being our dream but it's not really been a realistic possibility until now (and might not even be now!).

We have a potential opportunity to buy a plot of land in a great area. We don't know size or price yet, but I'm just looking to understand exactly what we'd be getting ourselves in to before we express a firm interest.

We'd be looking at a 4/5 bed house, possibly around 2000-2250 sq ft.

If you've done it, how long did it take, how much did it cost (and how much over budget!) and how did you go about it E.g. a builder took care of it all or you project managed.

Haven't done this (yet!) but this is our plan in the future. Have you had a look at Potton Homes?

We self built 3 years ago. We chose a pre fabricated house as we were impressed by the high energy efficiency standards and fixed costs,plus having one company doing everything made construction a dream.
The only issues we had were with the builder who did the slab,as he was nothing to do with the construction company,we had to find him independently. He was incompetent at best.

The slab and ground works were about 18k,electricity supply £1.5k ( we were lucky to be building at the same time as other family members so split the cost) septic system around £4k. We had to put a new access in,again split the cost so circa £1.5.

The house itself is a 3 bed 3 bath detached,2000sq ft. We have a study downstairs that can be converted into a bedroom in the future,and a sitting room upstairs. The basic cost was £192k,that included all decoarating,tiling,bathrooms,flooring,and,heating but we added on things that took it up to £240k,like an oak staircase instead of the standard beech one,wooden floors all the way through downstairs,instead of carpets,a larger bath and shower,underfloor heating all the way through and an air source heat pump and mechanical ventilation system. The construction was incredibly efficient and organised.Our house was ready to move into in under 8 weeks.

We costed it out and found that if we had gone for the same sort of sipps panel house and sourced everything ourselves,it would have cost approx £40k more. We love the house,it's warm,quiet, energy efficient and easy to live in. The company we used was Danwood UK.