Give yourself the best chance of a smooth, successful project with Mike Hardwick’s most-valued expert tips from over a decade of advising and inspiring Build It readers

Attending events such as Build It Live is a great way to gain access to expert advice - although you won’t be seeing yours truly presenting in future! My Build It colleague Mike Dade investigated this garden plot in a rural setting back in 2019. The location, outside of the local development area, meant that gaining planning consent for new houses in the large garden would be very unlikely - a classic pitfall

When my wife and I built our family home back in 2002, little did we know I would spend the next 18 years firmly entrenched in the self build world. For the past 10 years, I’ve been writing for Build It and advising at the Build It Live shows. This month marks my last article before I retire. In all that time, I’ve encountered some commonplace and often quite questionable ideas about self building that regularly crop up. So, as a parting shot, I’m going to try to address some of these and put the record straight!

1 Self building is not necessarily a way to get a cheap house

Don’t get me wrong: you can do it on the cheap, particularly if you already own or have access to a building plot, and you have the sort of trade or DIY skills that will negate much of the labour costs. But the vast majority of individual self build projects are detached houses. This means you need a reasonably-sized plot, which is likely to represent a big portion of your overall budget. Most self builders are also looking for something a little better than standard in terms of the amount of living space and quality of construction and finish. Naturally, these things cost money to achieve.

So if you’re on a very tight budget, it will be cheaper to buy something on an estate built by one of the major developers. You’ll also get more cost certainty than commissioning your own project. Love them or hate them, big developers have the power to buy land at huge discounts and build quickly to a low, profit-making budget - which is reflected in their prices. However, you’ll no doubt pay a new-build premium meaning that if you sell after a year, say, it’s unlikely you’ll get back what you paid (unless the market has risen steeply).

With a self build, the chances are you’ll pay a bit more. But the finished home will ultimately be more valuable because of the care and quality put into its construction. As a rough guide, your bespoke home could be worth 15%-20% more than an equivalent spec-built property. So you may not get a cheap house, but play your cards right and you should get the best value-for-money through increased equity.