Building a House for Under £150,000: Case Studies

"It's small, but beautiful." (above)

Eileen Cole was determined not to scrimp on quality when it came to the construction of her new home — but she managed to keep down the build costs to £142,000 (£1,154/m²) by building small. The 123m² house contains two large bedrooms – “It’s quite a small house, but it suits me perfectly,” she says – and is very well appointed with bespoke hardwood windows and plenty of oak joinery. Eileen further reduced her costs by directly employing tradesmen and buying her own materials.

"We did loads of work"

Clive Blakey and Pauline Fletcher achieved a hugely impressive build cost of £134,000 (at just £467/m²) on their self-built home in Somerset thanks in large part to their incredible hands-on attitude. Clive and Pauline quit their jobs as teachers to physically build the vast majority of the house themselves — taking on all the jobs after the foundations and brickwork. They saved money on design fees by employing a technician to draw up their scaled drawings, and scoured eBay for bargain fittings — their second-hand gates (above) cost just £80, while they picked up their whole kitchen, ex-display, for just £1,000.

"We didn't scrimp..."

A four bedroom oak frame in a Conservation Area in one of the most affluent parts of Oxfordshire might not be the obvious place for a build budget of just £134,000 (£770/m²), but that’s exactly what Terry Morgan has achieved. He saved significantly on fees by designing the house himself and managed the project – buying materials and finding tradesmen – without scrimping on the key elements such as roof tiles.

"Costs were key to every decision"

Gordon Aitken’s self-built house in Fife is one of the more remarkable budget stories of recent times. His impressively styled contemporary four bedroom oneand- a-half storey house cost just £59,858 (an astonishing £393/m²) to build — yet is more impressive than most houses costing three times as much. Gordon thought about build costs from the outset, reducing costs at the design stage (“It’s more economical to have a bigger size of joist than to put extra walls in the foundations,” says Gordon). He used a local builder for their keen pricing and sourced a lot of the materials himself, mixing standard DIY shed suites with designer taps for instance, and pitching in with DIY on weekends to cut labour costs.
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"I became an ace project manager"

Single mum Caron Pain took on the role of fearsome project manager to achieve an astonishing build cost of £110,000 (£550/m²) – £20,000 under her original budget – for her five bedroom self-build in Norfolk. She designed the house herself (using a structural engineer to produce building drawings from her scheme), shopped hard to find materials bargains on eBay, from retailers’ 20%-off days, and from merchants – picking up 16,000 charming traditional-style bricks at just £240/1,000 – and by negotiating hard on labour rates.
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"We made good choices"

It was a combination of taking on the role of project managers and some canny shopping choices that helped Ian and Sarah Gluyas to build their four bedroom detached house in Oxfordshire for just £125,000 (£806/m²). Decisions on which the couple were not prepared to compromise by spending less (such as the Michelmersh facing bricks) were largely offset by using relatively cheap French clay roof tiles. They bought two Belfast sinks for £60 and saved money on the kitchen by buying the units unpainted, for the couple to finish and install themselves. Ian also turned his hand to lots of work around the house, enlisting the help of some family members along the way.
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More Budget Self-builds:

• A Cottage Built for £50,000
• A Hillside Home Built for £140,000
• A Traditional Four Bedroom Family Home Built for £120,000
• A Family Home Built for Just £115,000

Further reading:

• The Ten Rules of Building a House for Under £150,000
• The Homebuilding & Renovating Project Planner
• The Project Manager's Toolkit