Has anyone built their own house?

As a rule of thumb when looking at new build properties I use 1/3 land cost, 1/3 construction cost and 1/3 developer profit. Since you are the developer that should mean 1/3 saved relative to the typical market price of the house. A bit ass backwards but you get my drift no doubt.
 
Take care when building; it can be far more expensive than you think.

Unless you sit down and draft up a brand new plan from scratch (which will be monstrously expensive anyway) you will have to buy off existing plans.

The problem with buying off an existing plan is that it starts cheap, but the price escalates quickly. This is because the plans offered by builders often only include the most basic features; anything else is counted as an "extra", for which they will charge like wounded bulls. It's how they make their profit.

Every additional power point; every additional cupboard; every additional light fitting; any change whatsoever will result in an added cost. And heaven help you if you want to change the layout; moving a wall is expensive, even on paper.

I once nearly built a house off a plan, after making only a few cosmetic changes. The price soared beyond my budget, and I had to pull out at the last minute. I was lucky to lose only $1,500. It could have been a lot more.
 
SideWinder said:
Just curious about how much it costs building your own house as opposed to buying a house. I understand it would be far more complicated - design, buying/finding the land, any problems on site, the amount of time needed to commit 100% and so on.

So has anyone done it? :)
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id love to build my own house..

I want to build a bunker which extends deep below the house, and has atleast double or triple the space of the house above..
 
I know those figures because i used to build them for a living working in an architectual practice, have built LOADS of housing projects and a few private 1 off houses. The most impressive was this 5 beds (4 with ensuite), Study, with reception rooms, diner/kitchen, living rooms, extra bathroom, utility, Georgian windows, detach house and all come under budget for £200k. The couple already have the land, so i dunno what that costs them in the first place.

Buying land without planning is a risk, you can of course apply planning for land that doesn't belong to you but you have to notify the owner you are doing so, so if you get it, his selling price will sky rocket. You can of course enter into a contract to him that you will buy the land subject to planning approval. The other way, a slightly cheaper way is to apply for outline planning approval, its basically planning to build a house on the land, very few drawings thus cheaper. Once you get it, you can apply for full planning approval.

BTW - £1,200 per sq meter is per floor, double that for 2 storeys, that said, the garage would be cheaper to build as the finish is not the same as the main house.
 
My old Man has built three, this one I'm sat in now a year before I was born and 2 villas in Crete. So I can't really advise any further. :D

Must be money in it as he's been swanning round the world in a motorhome for a good few years now.
 
20k for land? How big is it - postage stamp size?

You won't find decent building land under 120k these days.

I've helped my old man build a couple. It can be ridiculously hard work and usually takes about 3x more than you budgeted for, and about 3x the time you thought it'd take.

The best advice I could ever give somebody doing a self-build: contract the brickies, the roofer and the joiner. Eveything else you can either pay cash in hand or do yourself, but if you don't get a contract for the build, the roof and the carpentry, they will take forever and eat into your budget.
 
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Haven't personally, but a lot of my family in Jordan have done that (more people build their houses than in the UK), and you get a much nicer house for your money. Also it's based on your wants/needs, not some generic one.
 
I've had lots of time off work, inspired by EVHs thread and there's a huge wealth of knowledge on here. I've been fiddling about with few floor plans trying to make it as small and cheap as possible whilst delivering something extremely usable. Found a lot of price guides on homebuilding and renovating websites. But would like to get some rough estimates from a sips company just to see what build costs would be like. But what drawing plans do they need? they all just say send us plans in dxf format. But surly they need more info than a floor plan. So what would such a plan look like.
 
I would expect 1:100 scaled plan, 2 sections and elevations on 4 sides. Also mark where is the nearest existing manhole, your crap has to go to it, literally. Else you will need a tank, so that need to be budgeted for too.

You also need to show the materials used (tiles or slate, pre-fray windows or custom, on the subject of windows, they are normally fixed sizes. So you need you know what you need, you can use custom sizes, but its normally a bad idea as it makes the brickwork out of wack.) This information can just be written on the drawings.

It's known as Working Drawings. The set of drawings a quantity surveyor would need to cost up a project.
 
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Them just use the rough rule of thumb of £1200 per sq metre.

May be less if you do some work yourself or in a cheaper area.
 
Don't think those figures can be used for a lot, specked a lot of stuff up, windows doors are all standard sized triple glazed units, did one of those kitchen designs on b&q website


I may well have too much time on my hands.
 
That link is pretty much it but i tend to draw the thickness of the wall with insulation.

That link shows the external wall same thickness as the internal. Which is wrong, it doesn't show what is structural and what's not. External wall would be about 300mm and 100mm for internal (you can test this out by getting a ruler on your house if you like over a door or window), actually to be really anal, it's 125mm for internal if you count the 12.5mm plasterboard either side for internal, or 285mm for external if the house is a timber frame.
 
Do you need triple glazing?

I just had my windows replaced and the guy who did the job for me said they were unnecessary in the UK and cost more initially than they would ever save
 
JBuk said:
Do you need triple glazing?

I just had my windows replaced and the guy who did the job for me said they were unnecessary in the UK and cost more initially than they would ever save
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Triple glazing is used more for acoustic reasons than thermal.
 
Not sure what that building is, but sips are one size inside and out around 150-250mm depending on the insulation and would want standard rendering outside.
 
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