You may have seen the television show Grand Designs on Channel 4 and thought that is the way to make sure you have your dream home. Looking for the perfect home can be a difficult task and if you have a set idea in your head of how you want it to look, you may be better off building your own.
The first stage of building a home of your own is finding a plot of land that you can build on. There are many ways that you can search for a plot. You can use sites such as this on the internet, go for a walk or a drive around the area you are hoping to build in and see if you can spot any land you can build on, and ask around the local community to see if anybody is selling land locally.
You want to make sure that you get the right place, as this will be the biggest single purchase in the whole project. Factor in other things, such as connections to utilities and drainage, and particularly if you are looking at buying brownfield land, whether you need any contaminated land remediation services from a company such as https://soilfix.co.uk/services/groundwater-soil-remediation-services
As well as finding empty land there’s another option – you can often find a building that you can demolish yourself and then build on the land. This can sometimes work out cheaper, despite the fact that you need to pay for the demolition yourself, so don’t rule anything out!
Demolishing an existing house to free a plot
Building land in the UK is in short supply and high demand, so good plots tend to be snapped up quickly. One route many self-builders take is to buy an existing property, demolish it and build on the land. It can seem a strange way of going about things, but it often secures a better plot and can even work out cheaper.
The most important step is to make sure you can get planning permission for the new home before you buy. Discovering afterwards that you cannot build what you want would be an expensive mistake, so if this is new to you, take advice from people with real experience in this area.
The demolition itself should go to a specialist company. It is dangerous work and not something to attempt yourself unless you are qualified. Building your own home this way can be a long and sometimes stressful process, but the reward at the end makes it worthwhile for many people.
Buying a house to knock down
If the right plot simply will not come up, there is another route worth considering: buying an existing building, demolishing it and building your new home on the same site. It can sound like an odd idea, and some people would rather renovate or extend what is already there, but to get exactly the home you want it can be the better and cheaper option.
Once the old structure has been cleared by a demolition contractor, you are left with a blank canvas in a location you already love. That gets around one of the hardest parts of self-building, which is finding land in the right place.
There are limits. Knocking down a terraced or semi-detached house is far more difficult and may not be possible at all. A detached house in an enviable spot, however, is well worth looking into and should not be ruled out if you want to build your dream home.