All About Self-build

An Individually Designed Home

Building your own home is the only way that you can truly get the house you want. Imagine living in a house that has been designed around your unique needs as a family, your own personalities, tastes, and desires for extra space, the number of bedrooms, bathrooms and even taps. Even the positioning of the windows, colour of the bricks or render, the size and shape of the roof and the shape of the garden can be designed around your needs.

How many people build their own home?

More and more people are building their own homes each year — between 18-20,000 new homes were built in 2008, making the army of self-builders the second largest housebuilder in the country (behind Taylor Wimpey). Every one of these houses looks different in some way; some are traditional in style, being authentic replicas of Georgian, Tudor and Victorian homes, with warm, cosy interiors and plenty of cottage appeal; some are radically contemporary in design, with white rendered or wood clad exteriors, flat roofs, vast areas of glazing and large, open plan interiors. What unites them is the singular determination of their owners to refuse to follow the mainstream and accept what commercial developers decide what they should have in a house. You can get an idea of the type of houses that self-builders create here.

No Need for Building skills

Self-building, of course, does not necessarily mean picking up bricks and physically getting stuck in on site. In fact, less than 5% of all homebuilding projects involve the owner being significantly involved with the actual building process. While many people enjoy helping out on site, and perhaps even putting their own DIY skills to use finishing the interiors, decorating or creating their new garden, a large number of so-called ‘self-builders’ have no involvement whatsoever with the physical work. They will be involved in formulating a design brief for the house designer, selecting a builder, and choosing the internal fixtures and fittings — but little else. Regardless of whether you are very busy or have plenty of time on your hands, your involvement in the project can be tailored entirely around your own lifestyle.

Features

New bespoke homes are also at the cutting edge of technology and many enjoy the best features available to homeowners. Underfloor heating is only just catching on with developers but has been popular with self-builders for many years; labour-saving features such as a central vacuum and even automated home technology can also be incorporated at a fraction of the cost you might expect. These features can revolutionise your lifestyle: at the touch of a button you can control the heating, climate, lighting and entertainment functions of your entire home.

Profitable

Yet having a bespoke home built especially for you sounds expensive, right? Wrong. By going through the process of arranging a design and having a personal input with the housebuilding process, you can usually save yourself up to 38% on the market value. As a guide rule, the house that you spend £300,000 building should quite easily be worth £400,000 if all goes to plan. As a way to make money in a flat property market it is unbeatable — and as a way to create a home based around your unique needs, it is second to none.

Design

Building your own home from scratch is the ultimate chance to create something that is completely designed around your own unique needs as a family. Firstly, analyse what your essential requirements are: number of bed­rooms, size of kitchen/breakfast room; garag­ing; home office/study; number and size of bathrooms; etc. Your requirements should also take into account the potential resale chances of the property, so if you are thinking of selling in a few years, avoid anything too out of the ordinary.

If resale is not an issue, then you really do have a blank canvas and your choice ranges from replicating a period style of your liking to a white, contemporary-style home with lots of glass and open plan spaces. If you like modern interiors but aren’t sure that the planners will let you build a modern home, then don’t forget that many of the finest self-built houses combine a ‘safe’ traditional exterior with very contemporary, open plan interiors — the planners have no say on what the inside of the house looks like!

Magazines such as Homebuilding & Renovating – and websites like this - are a great source of design ideas and you should keep favourite homes, rooms and ideas (both exterior and interior) to one side to present to your designer. Once you have found your plot you should also pay close attention to the style of homes in the surrounding area; not only will this influence the planning authority in making their decision (more on which later) but will ensure – unless you purposely want to stand out – that the house fits into its surroundings and com­ple­ments the neighbouring properties.

A good design will make the most of its individual site and for this reason coming up with sketches for ‘your dream home’ before you have bought a site is futile. Your plot will have unique properties such as slopes, trees, views, neighbouring properties to avoid overlooking, access problems and so on — all of which should affect the house design you end up with. For more advice on what constitutes a good house design click here.

Further reading:

• The 12 steps of self-build is a complete guide to all the practical aspects of self-build

• Find out more about house design in the self-build design advice section

• Get tips and advice from other self-builders and renovators in the Homebuilding Discussion Forum