Buying land to build a house
Discussion
garyhun said:
Porridge GTI said:
Hard to be passionate when you’ve never done it.
It’s probably not for you then.I had an incredibly strong desire to self-build for at least 15 years before I did mine. I was actively looking for a plot for the last 5 of those 15 having sold my house and in various rentals.
Without that passion I doubt I would have found my plot and given up years previously.
blueg33 said:
Exactly. Its not for everyone, you have done well to stick with it and probably have a great house as a result, but you had to take risks and persevere.
Well ....... I actually sold mine and am hoping to start looking for land again in the next few months to do it all again.That’s how self-building gets to you
Watching this thread with interest. My parents bought an undeveloped 1up 1down cottage semi at auction and extended it into a 4bed while I was crawling age. Basically a new build but also sorted the issue of a plot.
Always half thought I would do something similar, but have instead ended up buying a good size Edwardian property in need of modernising, I think it will suit us better but absolute props to all self builders.
Daniel
Always half thought I would do something similar, but have instead ended up buying a good size Edwardian property in need of modernising, I think it will suit us better but absolute props to all self builders.
Daniel
Here we are:
Affordable land would mean affordable housing. Here’s how we get there
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct...
Daniel
Affordable land would mean affordable housing. Here’s how we get there
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct...
Daniel
dhutch said:
Here we are:
Affordable land would mean affordable housing. Here’s how we get there
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct...
Lovely, but who's it being leased FROM?Affordable land would mean affordable housing. Here’s how we get there
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct...
TooMany2cvs said:
dhutch said:
Here we are:
Affordable land would mean affordable housing. Here’s how we get there
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct...
Lovely, but who's it being leased FROM?Affordable land would mean affordable housing. Here’s how we get there
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct...
In every other respect, the article is pure fantasy. If such land were the solution to all our problems, then Housing Associations (who are much better placed to raise build finance and manage the build process than hordes of amateurs who know nothing about residential development) would be the ones to do it.
dhutch said:
Magic easy to come by land for cheap.
Except that Local Authorities have a legal requirement imposed upon them that they must dispose of assets at best value to the tax payer.Certainly, they can (and already do) dispose of such land to Housing Associations.
Some are also including it in their considerations against their legal obligations to deliver land supply for self-builders, but there's a world of difference between a parcel of disused land and a serviced individual plot with infrastructure in place, upon which you can then begin your efforts at cat-herding.
Equus said:
They're suggesting land in local authority ownership, so it would be leased from the Local Authority.
In every other respect, the article is pure fantasy. If such land were the solution to all our problems, then Housing Associations (who are much better placed to raise build finance and manage the build process than hordes of amateurs who know nothing about residential development) would be the ones to do it.
Finally found something that I disagree with you on. In every other respect, the article is pure fantasy. If such land were the solution to all our problems, then Housing Associations (who are much better placed to raise build finance and manage the build process than hordes of amateurs who know nothing about residential development) would be the ones to do it.
I think it is a great idea.It is absurd that I can't go online, configure and buy a house in exactly the same way I can a car. The only barrier to it (ok that's a lie) is that the industry doesn't work like this. We should just do it like they do in scandinavia.
Council has site. Council (or developer/HA etc) masterplans site with 100 units, 10 different house types, each HT can be internally configured by the end purchaser online along with external materials etc etc.
Purchaser reserves plot 47, goes online and configures/choses HT3, but the 4 bed version in red brick. Ikea/HA/Developer comes along and builds chosen house on the site, financed on a mortgage/PCP/other finance arrangement.
If you've ever been a timber house manufacturing plant, you feed the drawings in one end, press print and the house components come out the other end. The tech is already there - it's done in manufacturing all of the time.
See here for example: https://www.housebyurbansplash.co.uk/configurator/
Importantly whilst the product/sales process hasn't changed for 40 years, the end purchaser has and is now far more informed/design literate. I mentioned a self build scheme we did in the 90's (e.g. pre Grand Designs) a few pages back and every single house ended up looking like a wimpy house, because that's what people wanted - that's what people knew.
The world has moved on, the industry hasn't. Housing is one of the most risk averse industries out there. People hate wimpy boxes but they buy them. They buy them because they don't have any choice. House builders won't change it because people buy them. It's a Catch 22.
Equus said:
Except that Local Authorities have a legal requirement imposed upon them that they must dispose of assets at best value to the tax payer.
So you just change the law 
The Government is spending billions on housing at the moment. I can get government (taxpayers') money as equity on a housing development. I can borrow government money to finance the build. The people I'm selling it to get government money to buy it off me. It's absurd. It's great for me obviously, but it is not the answer.
Oh and abolish Right to Buy. A HA has to raise (borrow) money to build an affordable housing estate. The bank asks for a valuation and it comes out at say £20m. At the same time Right to Buy allows the people in the affordable houses buy the houses at a discount. If they all did that (which the bank has to assume they will in order to cover their risk), the development is only worth £12m and that isn't enough to pay for the construction. Result - affordable houses don't get built.
Right to Buy is Tory dogma (I don't mean that in a partisan way), it is nonsense in the current climate.
Equus said:
TooMany2cvs said:
dhutch said:
Here we are:
Affordable land would mean affordable housing. Here’s how we get there
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct...
Lovely, but who's it being leased FROM?Affordable land would mean affordable housing. Here’s how we get there
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct...
And that's before we get into the whole mess around MegaBuilder having a headlease on the land then writing up individual leases for plots at a time when every bugger + dog has it in their head that leasehold is from Satan, because MegaBuilders have been taking the piss on ground rent increases.
ben5575 said:
It is absurd that I can't go online, configure and buy a house in exactly the same way I can a car.
You can, to the degree that you could configure a new car: many major developers have options lists and options packages for the 'superficial' stuff (kitchens and bathrooms, joinery, ironmongery, electrics, etc.).One of the reasons for the speed and cost-effectiveness of developer housing is that their designs are highly optimised and thoroughly costed by teams of in-house QS's. They know, pretty much to the penny, how much they cost to build above DPC level, what materials they will need, and where to source them with the best value 'group deals'... and how long they will take to build. Introduce more than a basic level of customisation, and you blow all that efficiency out of the water.
ben5575 said:
Council has site. Council (or developer/HA etc) masterplans site with 100 units, 10 different house types, each HT can be internally configured by the end purchaser online along with external materials etc etc.
For this to work as you describe it, the 10 different house type would each need to be capable of sitting on exactly the same plot size, and the masterplan would need to use exactly identical plots. The reality of residential estate layout design is that, yes, you might use 10 or more different house types, but they're each designed to serve a specific function (some for narrow, deep plots, some for wide, shallow plots, some on external corners, some on internal corners, some south facing frontages, some south facing back gardens, etc., etc.). Similar in principle, some Local Authorities are using 'masterplanned' areas on larger developments by mainstream developers as a means of delivering serviced self-build plots against their self-builder obligations, but for the reasons outlined above, practical experience has shown that you're back to cat-herding.
ben5575 said:
If you've ever been a timber house manufacturing plant, you feed the drawings in one end, press print and the house components come out the other end. The tech is already there - it's done in manufacturing all of the time.
I've not merely been in a timber house (frame) manufacturing plant, I've been Design & Technical Director of one. And I can tell you that it doesn't quite work like that - having just spent the last 3 weeks almost solid, detailing the timber frame, steelwork and glulams on a block of TF flats for my former employer, liaising between structural engineers, client and client's architect along the way, I fervently wish that it did!
Here's the resultant model. which is on one of the two screens on my CAD workstation as I type this:
You can approach that level of efficiency with the most expensive, up-to-date machinery that you can buy (which then needs to be run at high volume to recoup the investment), IF you are manufacturing large numbers of exactly identical frames, but once again, any appreciable level of customisation or individuality wrecks the efficiency of the process altogether.
Equus said:
dhutch said:
Magic easy to come by land for cheap.
Except that Local Authorities have a legal requirement imposed upon them that they must dispose of assets at best value to the tax payer.Certainly, they can (and already do) dispose of such land to Housing Associations.
Some are also including it in their considerations against their legal obligations to deliver land supply for self-builders, but there's a world of difference between a parcel of disused land and a serviced individual plot with infrastructure in place, upon which you can then begin your efforts at cat-herding.
We also have SEP's (startegic estates partnerships) with the NHS that do much the same.
Ok, so I may have slightly oversimplified the timber frame bit... 
But now you've spent those three weeks designing it, you could now just 'rattle off' 50 of them which was more the point I was clumsily trying to make. You would also deliver them to site with to a prepared floor slab/scaffolding and crane it in in a day (well perhaps not that particular example..!)
Re online configuring and in response to some of your points, did you click the urban splash link: https://www.housebyurbansplash.co.uk/configurator/ ? That's a standard foundation/slab built on site with configurable internal partitions and finishes. That's different from upselling punters chrome sockets like the big boys do.
I also take your point about different sites having a variety of different plot types that require different responses. However considering that volume builders have off the shelf House Types (costed down to the last £ as you say) which are then plonked like potato cutouts onto all of their sites, I'm not suggesting something all that different.
I'm not going to rehearse the Freshman year modular building arguments here, but I would say that the bathroom pods I've used on my student and hotel developments have got a lot better in recent years and generally just needed craning into site and connecting up.
There's no reason why you or I shouldn't be able to buy an 'Ikea' (and yes I know their UK housebuilding history) house online and get them to plonk it down just like your timber frames on a prepared concrete slab. It gives me control over the house I want, it is built at an affordable price and sold at a sensible level.
The challenge is how you deal with the property value. Cheap land + modular build = cheap initial price (relative to the market), but it would be popular, so demand would increase along with the values. Selling the first one at £150k only for it to double in value the moment it is sold kind of defeats the purpose of the exercise. Unless like affordable housing it's kept at 80% of market value in perpetuity for example.
But now you've spent those three weeks designing it, you could now just 'rattle off' 50 of them which was more the point I was clumsily trying to make. You would also deliver them to site with to a prepared floor slab/scaffolding and crane it in in a day (well perhaps not that particular example..!)Re online configuring and in response to some of your points, did you click the urban splash link: https://www.housebyurbansplash.co.uk/configurator/ ? That's a standard foundation/slab built on site with configurable internal partitions and finishes. That's different from upselling punters chrome sockets like the big boys do.
I also take your point about different sites having a variety of different plot types that require different responses. However considering that volume builders have off the shelf House Types (costed down to the last £ as you say) which are then plonked like potato cutouts onto all of their sites, I'm not suggesting something all that different.
I'm not going to rehearse the Freshman year modular building arguments here, but I would say that the bathroom pods I've used on my student and hotel developments have got a lot better in recent years and generally just needed craning into site and connecting up.
There's no reason why you or I shouldn't be able to buy an 'Ikea' (and yes I know their UK housebuilding history) house online and get them to plonk it down just like your timber frames on a prepared concrete slab. It gives me control over the house I want, it is built at an affordable price and sold at a sensible level.
The challenge is how you deal with the property value. Cheap land + modular build = cheap initial price (relative to the market), but it would be popular, so demand would increase along with the values. Selling the first one at £150k only for it to double in value the moment it is sold kind of defeats the purpose of the exercise. Unless like affordable housing it's kept at 80% of market value in perpetuity for example.
blueg33 said:
Local Authorities have loads of land, and they can enter frameworks. The business that I work for has a number of LABV's (Local Asset Back Vehicles), basically JV's with the local authority where they put in the land, we put in the build and profits are shared. We have built everything from social housing to hotels, libraries and ice rinks.
We also have SEP's (startegic estates partnerships) with the NHS that do much the same.
I work for a small building company in the SE. How do you get these opportunities? Sounds right up our street, obviously on a scale we could deliver. We also have SEP's (startegic estates partnerships) with the NHS that do much the same.
ben5575 said:
But now you've spent those three weeks designing it, you could now just 'rattle off' 50 of them which was more the point I was clumsily trying to make.
You could provided some b
d doesn't go and make any changes to it, which is what you're suggesting by saying that self-builders should be allowed to customise designs to suit themselves.As I said, I've just spent 3 weeks not designing that timber frame, but coordinating and implementing some fairly trivial updates to it (literally limited to moving/omitting a handful of internal walls).
ben5575 said:
You would also deliver them to site with to a prepared floor slab/scaffolding and crane it in in a day (well perhaps not that particular example..!)
Even with a modestly sized house, you're out by a factor of 5 on the erection time for the basic timber frame, designed and erected in the normal manner....And that's assuming that you've got all your self-build cats herded into a neat line, so that the crane and your timber frame erectors are contiguously available to go from erection of one plot to the next (experienced TF erectors are in short supply, incidentally, which is another not inconsiderable problem you'll face if you want to significantly boost UK housing supply using TF standard designs). With self-builders, you're lucky to get them all lined up to commence construction within years of each other, never mind days.
But you've obviously got it all sorted. I can only suggest you give it a try. You'll be a millionaire by Christmas, I'm sure.
Edited by Equus on Tuesday 23 October 15:34
Easy tiger, I think we're on slightly different wavelengths here Equus
I'm referring to the Guardian article, not the thread title. I understand your points in the context of a self builder - people changing their minds, the slab being wrong, crane arriving on the wrong day etc.
I'm talking about an 'Ikea' type company that you buy a completed house from. As a punter you configure online and pay for it. Like your car, it gets manufactured off site then delivered. Ikea plug it in and the punter doesn't have to do anything apart from move in. It's literally what Urban Splash are doing on that link I posted so it does work.
It's not self build but it does present a different and perhaps more up to date way of buying a house. A volume housebuilder is simply a business that produces widgets. It's just that the widgets are houses manufactured and sold in an old fashioned way.
I based my erection timescales (
) on my only experience of timber frame (not my scheme I should hasten to add) which each went up in a day. http://trivselhusbyesh.co.uk/inspiration.
Sadly at 50-150 units a site, we don't have the critical mass to change the world. We do do it differently though.
I'm referring to the Guardian article, not the thread title. I understand your points in the context of a self builder - people changing their minds, the slab being wrong, crane arriving on the wrong day etc.
I'm talking about an 'Ikea' type company that you buy a completed house from. As a punter you configure online and pay for it. Like your car, it gets manufactured off site then delivered. Ikea plug it in and the punter doesn't have to do anything apart from move in. It's literally what Urban Splash are doing on that link I posted so it does work.
It's not self build but it does present a different and perhaps more up to date way of buying a house. A volume housebuilder is simply a business that produces widgets. It's just that the widgets are houses manufactured and sold in an old fashioned way.
I based my erection timescales (
) on my only experience of timber frame (not my scheme I should hasten to add) which each went up in a day. http://trivselhusbyesh.co.uk/inspiration.Sadly at 50-150 units a site, we don't have the critical mass to change the world. We do do it differently though.
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