Who Self Builds?
People self build for many different reasons. The majority of self build houses you will read about are the large scale projects – each person creating their vision of a dream home and their secret ambition to be their own property developer or simply as a way to make money.
A self build home is no small task and will take several months to complete. If you sell your home to release capital, where will you live? Renting a room from a friend to keep rent costs down and leave the site at the end of the day is one option. Others have a caravan on their building plot. In recent years progress has been made in self build lending and self build mortgages offering a variety of options to fund your property development.
It is important to be realistic – your self build home may not go according to plan. Careful research, forward thought and planning, taking professional advice, and making use of the vast community of self builders who have already been through the process in the same way you may be doing is the key. Get as many perspectives as possible.
Management skills are useful as good planning and anticipation can relieve much of the pain and frustration that may occur. Financial planning before and during the self build development can ensure constant progress and materials are bought on time and within budget to make worthwhile savings.
Many self build lenders will only make the staged payments once each stage of the build have been completed and then valued. Organising and maintaining cash flow throughout your project can become imperative and can mean the self builder is forced to pay out their own money to meet wages and the cost of materials. A 10% contingency fund is a wise move.
Self build homes have many ups and downs. Part of the fun is the challenge of property development, watching your house grow from the plot of land. The satisfaction of watching your hard work come to fruition and your self built home is complete is phenomenal!
