Building your own house: should there be more of this in the UK?

[Kokeshi123]

https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/property/uks-communist-housing-market-ripe-revolution

The UK is quite unusual in the very low percentage of new houses that are self-built. In many other developed countries, a third or more of all new single-family homes may be self-built, often by companies where buyers can purchase packages and choose from styles which they can then customize.

Should this be commoner in the UK? Is there anyone here who has done it or considered it?

It occurs to me that making houses properly insulated and rigged up with modern heating systems and solar power would be easier if self-build were commoner. The Nordic countries have shown that heat-pump alone is fine for cold winters as long as homes are really well insulated and triple glazed, but many people in the UK are stuck with a choice of "not very inspiring new-builds" vs "old houses that are full of character but very hard to retrofit and insulate properly."

The planning system in this country is corrupt, incompetent and very, very slow. It took me 2 years to get permission for a tiny extension with a walk in shower for elderly person to come and live with us. I doubt if getting permission build and actual house would be any easier.

Yes, the article also talks about the sclerotic nature of the planning system. I wonder if Labour will succeed in overhauling this to any extent.

Of course, we don't want people being able to just throw up any old structure willy nilly.... but overly complex planning laws may have some peverse effects that are resulting in uglier and less satisfactory new build houses.

This is the norm in Australia - my DD went from selecting the house to moving in, in 4 months. The builders build a selection of display homes, you go for a wander and pick the one you like. Select paint colours, tiles, fixtures etc and then wait for it to be built for you. All the permissions are organised by the building company, it's very straightforward. A very sensible system.

We also don't have as much spare land. Even buying land is expensive

Yes there should be more self build but you try and get planning for it. Mission impossible. Even people who have their own land can't build .

We did a self build. Bought a plot, had an architect design a bespoke house. We then got a specialist company to build the structure of the house on site, and trades to do the interior. It’s highly insulated, triple glazed, etc. It took 8 years from buying the plot to moving in.

I won’t go into all the horror of it here 😊 but I definitely wouldn’t do it again. We had a nightmare with the planning - the application got through easily enough, but a neighbour suddenly became very unhappy when the house was going up and instructed a solicitor to make the local authority withdraw our permission. The local authority was hopelessly inept, and tried to do this. We spent a lot of money on lawyers, fighting a legal action. We were successful, and the permission stood - but it was horrendous.

Also, we couldn’t get any local trades to work on it - joiners/plumbers/electricians - because the structure was not standard construction, and outside their comfort zone. It felt like we were being exploited and ripped off a lot of the time. The specialist window company was totally inept, and we had to wait 18 months for the windows - with the build paused - because they were shockingly incompetent.

We were unlucky, and know two other self builders who have had good experiences - but they were hands-on people who did all the interior fitting out work themselves. It was obviously a lot of work, but they retained full control and could get things done without getting ripped off.

On the positive side, hopefully we have made some money as the house will be worth more than we spent. Also, our heating bills are very low which is brilliant at the moment.

Friends of mine are about to start. They have bought an old house on a beautiful plot and will tear that down. They will have spent a million quid before the new structure is even started.

Is this not just the same as the show houses on every new housing estate in the Uk?

That's new build rather than self build though isn't it?

I tend to think if you had the limitless budget that doing it entails (I know a fella who did it whose project exceeded 10x the estimated budget- ten bloody times!), you would go build a house somewhere as/more scenic with better weather than the UK.

it sounds like the Aussie method is similar to the system in Scandinavia which I think differs from a UK new build in that you get to tweak and change things to exactly how you want (although no experience of a UK new build so maybe I’ve misunderstood!)

So you pick your starting point/house footprint, and then go through the plans with the building company’s architect to move walls around etc to get the right size and shape of each room and where you want the windows / door to be. You also get to pick types of windows, brick colour and style, roof style, how many sockets, door style, flooring - everything basically. You also pick which way round you want the house to face on the plot of land (although they help you with this by looking at sun directions, light and shadows throughout the year).

I think the UK new builds are a bit more fixed so it’s more just paintwork and kitchen layout you get to pick there isn’t it?

The methods mentioned where there are already basic plans to be tweeked sound sensible.
Round here there are a number of self builds - a cluster from the 70s, and a cluster from the past 5 years or so. You can nearly always tell, as the insides often don't work.
I'd fully back an intermediate self build, where basic floorplans exist to be tweeked, but I think designs for new builds are pretty much of a muchness as they flow.

We looked into this in the late 1990's but eventually gave it up as a lost cause.

We looked at the different houses available "off the shelf" and worked out a (good) budget but no suitable land came up in our chosen area.
Of course people do buy plots of land all the time so maybe we just didn't look hard or long enough (although it didn't feel like that at the time!).

Being in the trade, OH was very conscious of being able to connect up to services (EL, water, phone etc) and we accepted that a septic tank and/or gas tank may be required but we were very aware of how these costs can trip up the unwary and how unexpected costs for connecting services can break a budget.

In the UK it's harder because there doesn't seem to be much concept of a serviced plot.

In other countries you buy a plot and everything is already there, gas, electric, water. Then you just build a house on the plot. Here if you buy land there is often a big battle getting the services put in.

As other people have said, building houses in this country is completely corrupt.

But while people continue to celebrate high house prices there is little chance of it changing.

At some point in the future it may become so big an issue that an entire political movement can be generated around it. Then we may see some action.

Why on earth do you think Labour would change this!! They don't want people with money to succeed. If you had enough money to buy land, they'd tax you.

Lots of ‘self build’ in France, if buying a plot with planning permission and easy or prearranged service connection and then working with one of the many house builders who actually erect it counts. They usually offer several designs for a designated plot area, and you are allowed to make changes within the budget (or you can pay extra if you step outside the list)

We saw many of these when looking for our house, and most of them were quite…strange. I suppose unprofessional in their designs, especially internally. Oddly placed doors which accommodated some inherited cupboard, kitchens which were not big enough because the male householder had wanted a larger workshop and that was the room which had a bit shaved off it, curious bathroom arrangements which probably seemed good in someone’s head but didn’t understand the basics of plumbing. Even the one we eventually bought needed a fair bit of internal reorganisation ( no washbasin near the loo) weird and dangerous staircase, extraordinary fireplace which took up half a wall to no apparent benefit . I suppose building regs are a lot more lax, several of the houses we saw would just not have been passed in the UK.

Actuel self build where the ( usually amateur) builder is doing it for themselves to live in is much rarer, and seemed to be fraught with difficulties, often financial. There were two houses near us which had stopped at the get a roof on for the timber stage.

I was interested in building a cob house at one time. Unfortunately my extreme laziness won out and I am living in an ordinary old house instead. It was a lovely dream.

Maybe because we've watched many years of Grand Designs and know you end up either unexpectedly pregnant with a child you haven't built a room for, divorced, wildly over budget, having to sell it to recoup losses or locked in an endless battle with council, suppliers and the elements.

Or all of the above.

I live in a house that was self built. It was part of a cooperative, 14 houses, and the original owners shared a lot of the labour, and several of them were professional tradesmen. The build quality is good, but the finishing left something to desire, I think by the time they got to that stage the couple that built ours were cheesed off because they divorced and sold the house shortly after finishing it. And the rows we've had during diy and decorating, I can see why......

Labour have specifically said they want to get more building going on and make progress with reducing the housing crisis, so they may bring in changes to the planning laws.

I wish it was easy/even possible. We have 3.5 acres behind our (nothing special) house, and would love to build on it but we're in an AONB and conservation area so no chance whatsoever.

No I don't think so. I'm based in Germany and it sounds more like building a prefab house here. You buy your own plot and contract a local builder to put up a prefab house selected from the catalogue of a number of national-level firms. There's customization but the main elements are fabricated off-site so can be put in place very quickly. It's getting more and more popular here, although most people still follow the traditional bricks-and mortar building process using an architect. My parents did that back in the early 80s. Got got a gorgeous house out of it but oh my God was it stressful - my mum got involved in a lot of chasing of tradesmen that should have been done by the architect! Took under two years iirc for the whole process from first plans, planning application to move-in.

The most powerful family in this country is the largest land owner. It's a huge asset and a huge asset class. Limiting access makes it more exclusive and preserves the value for them and their future children.
6,600,000,000 acres in all according to this link.
www.madisontrust.com/information-center/visualizations/worlds-largest-landowners/#:~:text=out%20on%20top!-,Who%20Owns%20the%20Most%20Land%20in%20the%20World%3F,of%20land%20around%20the%20world.

DH and I moved from the UK to Ireland and after renting for a year or two we bought a site then designed and built our own house. It took a year from getting planning permission to moving in. It's common enough in rural areas, both in Ireland and Northern Ireland. It's the best thing we ever did, it saved us a third on the price of buying an existing house, we have a massive garden and in terms of the house we got exactly what we needed.

It’s the local authorities that are the problem in the UK. They can miraculously approve 35story tower blocks and their whole authority can go completely bankrupt but they can’t approve a simple extension on a property that someone already owns.
They are corrupt jobsworths that’s all.