Despite the recession, “self-build” homes are still popular. Why? Because they’ve always offered better value for money than simply buying a home. Wait up a minute, what exactly is “self-build”? It’s a property you build yourself. It doesn’t have to mean LITERALLY by yourself, but you set yourself in the position as planner, foreman, architect of your house and let trained workers do the job you order them to do. “Self-build” is pretty much recession-proof due to the relatively low costs involved (relative to buying a house) - in fact, the army of “self-builders” in the UK outnumbers the amount of properties being developed by any professional developer. The function of self-build is to make a property to your precise specifications, not a boiler-plate design that commercial developers use.
Already you’re probably thinking: “I’m no developer”. The good news is that self-build doesn’t have to involve you with the physical aspects of the property development (as a matter of fact, only around 5% of self-builders actually take a role in the actual development of the property). Even when it comes to design, quite often this is delegated to a professional designer.. Self-build, generally, is about you expressing (in laymen’s terms), what you need to the property designer - who then produces a plan based on your requirements. This plan then becomes the blueprint the builders work to. Now do you see? You don’t need to have any active engagement in self-build. Having said that, the DIY enthusiast can use self-build as an opportunity to save some notes by helping out with the aspects of self-build they have experience in - it’s your shout as to how much involvement you want during the build.
Since you get complete control over the details of the self-build, you can choose the latest in technology, while commercial developers fall behind since they’re developing to rigid template designs. You can put in things like cost-saving lighting, automated climate, underfloor heating, and entertainment facilities throughout your home.
You must ensure the team of workers you select are 100% competent and that they work well together. For sure, you will need builders with lots of experience, particularly with specific types of building machinery, such as concrete cutting chainsaws, block and slab splitters, power / disc cutters, floor saws, and wood saws. Not only do they want to be safe with such equipment, they of course must do their job well too!
This article is merely an introduction to self-build, and I hope it will encourage those of you who are disheartened by the thought of executing 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, cautiously, and you will need to cautiously work out the budget of the project.