Planning a Self-Build
In spite of the recession, “self-build” houses are still popular. Why? Because they’ve always offered better value for money than simply purchasing a house. So what is “self-build”? It’s a home you build yourself, as the term suggests! Not necessarily only by yourself, but you put yourself in the position as planner, foreman, architect of your house and allow professional workers do the job you order them to do. More people are choosing the “self-build” route - in fact, there are more self-builders in the UK than the total amount of properties being built by any single developer. The intention of self-build is to create a property to your precise specifications, not a boiler-plate design that commercial developers use.
I’m sure you’re formulating this thought right about now: “But I’m not a builder”. The good news is that getting involved with a self-build project doesn’t have to involve you with the physical aspects of the home development (in point of fact, just 5% of self-builders in reality get involved with the actual construction work). Even when it comes to design, quite often this is delegated to a professional designer.. Self-build, generally, is about you articulating (in plain English), what you require to the house designer - who then produces a plan dependent on your necessities. This plan then becomes the draft the developers follow. Now do you see? It’s not required to have any active participation in self-build. Even so, the Do It Yourself fantatic can use self-build as an opportunity to save some cash by helping out with the aspects of self-build they have experience in - it’s your choice how much engagement you want during the construction.
Self-build sounds pricy, but in reality it’s more often than not cheaper than buying an already developed home of identical specifications (roughly a third cheaper). Not only that, self-built homes fetch a good price too - up to 25% higher than the actual build cost, so you can view self-build also as a means to invest your money, rather than just a place to live
You must make sure the group of workers you select are 100% competent and that they can work as a group. Without doubt, you will require builders with lots of experience, particularly with specific types of construction machinery, such as concrete cutting chainsaws, block and slab splitters, power / disc cutters, floor saws, and Masonry saws. With a skillful group of workers, you are also maximizing the safety levels of the build.
This article is merely an introduction to self-build, and I hope it will encourage those of you who are intimidated by the thought of planning a task of this kind of scale. It needn’t take up all of your time, and you won’t need house building / designing skills, but you will need to be particular as to who you hire, and you will need to carefully work out the budget of the project.
