Purchasing land to do a self build property

[Junaluma]

Has anyone done this/have any experience? DH and I have came across land for sale with planning permission to build a house on and we’ve done the math - would be much cheaper than buying a house in the same area and the stamp duty is cheaper on land than a house (you don’t pay any for the house, if my research is correct?)

How long did it take? What do you know now that you wish you knew from the start? What was the process like?

Thanks!

If it cost more to build a house than it's worth then no-one would build them.

House builders aren't building houses at a loss then selling them until they go bankrupt, they are really profitable businesses. The OP will have to spend a more than a big house builder because she has no economies of scale but unless she goes mad and splashes out on things that the market doesn't demand then it's still possible to make money on it, or at least not lose money (ie. you build something that's worth what you paid for it).

Often rebuild values are higher than the sale price on old houses built using a lot of expensive stone. That's not how houses are built these days. They are built using breeze blocks and faced in something nice.

This is insightful. I mean it might be cheaper in a sense to buy a house but we have looked around a lot and there is nothing in our budget that we like without major work and the layout is so awkward for us! Our current house has reached the ceiling of potential resell value so don’t see the point in extending without incurring a loss. Plus we got a quote for an extension so we are aware of the costs.

So we have decided to consider this option as the plot of land in this area as house prices are otherwise out of our reach and we feel like we have a healthy budget.

I'm halfway through my self-build and I can confirm that it takes longer than you think. The best advice I got was to have a proper structural survey before even breaking ground.

I used Alan Wood & Partners, and they handled everything from the flood risk assessment to foundation design.

It kept the whole process much smoother because the council wanted detailed engineering reports before approving the build