Boles Wants To Give Land To Young For Self Build

[rockhopper]

as per title. Guardian article

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/nov/22/coalition-young-self-build-scheme

a start but will it ever be more ... you can guess what I think.

[campervanman]

as per title. Guardian article

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/nov/22/coalition-young-self-build-scheme

a start but will it ever be more ... you can guess what I think.

I am not sure how many actually could self build. It is easy to talk idyllically about building your own house but from personal experience I would not want to build my own house and spend enough hours working to finance it. Self build is hard enough without spending another 40+ hours a week earning the money to pay the bills.

[Dorkins]

I am not sure how many actually could self build. It is easy to talk idyllically about building your own house but from personal experience I would not want to build my own house and spend enough hours working to finance it. Self build is hard enough without spending another 40+ hours a week earning the money to pay the bills.

Self build doesn't have to mean you actually stick the bricks together yourself, it could mean hiring a company to build a house for you on a plot of land you own.

[@contradevian]

I am not sure how many actually could self build. It is easy to talk idyllically about building your own house but from personal experience I would not want to build my own house and spend enough hours working to finance it. Self build is hard enough without spending another 40+ hours a week earning the money to pay the bills.

Quite easy, buy a plot and then order a home from a catologue, and buy a kit from one of the German and Polish manufacturers and it comes on the back of lorry. With the concrete base in place its up within days and you can move in within weeks.

http://www.weberhaus.co.uk/houses.html

I think in many Euro countries self build is about 60% of the market. Its complicated here by the cost of land and lack of permission which make self build only the preserve of the rich.

Edited November 23, 2013 by aSecureTenant

[campervanman]

Self build doesn't have to mean you actually stick the bricks together yourself, it could mean hiring a company to build a house for you on a plot of land you own.

The most cost effective way if you go down that route is to project manage and arrange the component part of the build yourself but that is time consuming and can go wrong if people let you down. Hiring a company to do a one off build which would include them doing the project management would probably not save a great deal from current housebuilder prices as the cost of building a house is usually 33% for each of land/materials and builder profit and the builder will want his cut from a "self build" project and you would not have the economies of scale that the big builders have. A better way I would have thought would be for groups of people to buy plots of land for,say,10 houses as a cooperative and use their individual skills on a barter basis to get the job dome.

Edited November 23, 2013 by campervanman

[Dorkins]

The most cost effective way if you go down that route is to project manage and arrange the component part of the build yourself but that is time consuming and can go wrong if people let you down. Hiring a company to do a one off build which would include them doing the project management would probably not save a great deal from current housebuilder prices as the cost of building a house is usually 33% for each of land/materials and builder profit and the builder will want his cut from a "self build" project and you would not have the economies of scale that the big builders have. A better way I would have thought would be for groups of people to buy plots of land for,say,10 houses as a cooperative and use their individual skills on a barter basis to get the job dome.

I don't think the point is to save money, it's to get a house that fits your wants and needs.

[campervanman]

I don't think the point is to save money, it's to get a house that fits your wants and needs.

I think the two are not mutually exclusive. In order to achieve one you will need to achieve the other,

[The Knimbies who say No]

Quite easy, buy a plot and then order a home from a catologue, and buy a kit from one of the German and Polish manufacturers and it comes on the back of lorry. With the concrete base in place its up within days and you can move in within weeks.

http://www.weberhaus.co.uk/houses.html

I think in many Euro countries self build is about 60% of the market. Its complicated here by the cost of land and lack of permission which make self build only the preserve of the rich.

Yes, this is what most would have in mind.

[FreeTrader]

I'm surprised at the 12 plots figure.

A couple of weeks ago we had this press release from DCLG:

Second wave of government land to be released for self-build housing

Aspiring self-builders will have the chance to realise their ambitions thanks to 4 new sites which are being released by the Homes and Communities Agency, Kris Hopkins said today (12 November 2013).

The sites form part of a wider government programme to support the growth of the custom build housing sector and give more people the opportunity to build their own homes.

The Housing Minister said these new sites will form around 70 plots for new homes. This will add to the 130 plots which are being made available under a government commitment to free up land for those looking to build their own homes.

[...]

The sites being announced today and which will be marketed for development by the Homes and Communities Agency on formerly-used public sector land are:

• Urban Pioneers, Middlehaven
  
• Oxley Park, Milton Keynes
  
• Pound Lane South, Basildon
  
• Lightmoor Village, Telford
  

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/second-wave-of-government-land-to-be-released-for-self-build-housing

[rockhopper]

I thought there would be some more and maybe that amount (the 130plots) is actually more like.

But if they want to make any impression on the 200k+ that has been suggested as the minimum per annum ,

then they need to do a minimum of 5% ie 10k plots per year and that would need to be distributed across

the country or at least the south east (?).

Of course the question is at what price - a give away - ha bloody ha (but if they do then I want one as well),

or at agricultural prices (~1k per plot) or at current building plot prices (?) as a nice little earner for the gov?

altho I think I would rather the profit (building plot price vs agri land price) went to the gov than to farmers or

people with a large garden - but I would rather see the end of that practice - how , maybe tax land gains at 95% ?

I think if this became common practice then best format would be a group of people getting together to purchase

say 12 plots worth and hiring someone to supervise or do the build .(as suggested by campervanman )

[terryturbojr]

Quite easy, buy a plot and then order a home from a catologue, and buy a kit from one of the German and Polish manufacturers and it comes on the back of lorry. With the concrete base in place its up within days and you can move in within weeks.

http://www.weberhaus.co.uk/houses.html

I think in many Euro countries self build is about 60% of the market. Its complicated here by the cost of land and lack of permission which make self build only the preserve of the rich.

Yep. I believe it's about 60%-70% in France and Germany.

Main issue we have here is land, but finance not readily available either. I think finance would become easier once land did though.

Definitely what we should be aiming for here, by separating land ownership and house building you should end up with far better houses. Currently the developers build as cheap as they can get away with as the land is the scarce resource.

It's ideally what I'd like to do. I'd much rather have a decent modern home than a period property using 100 year old building technology, alas developers in the UK pretty much exclusively don't build decent modern homes. They build aforementioned cheap as they can get away with.

Edited November 23, 2013 by terryturbojr

[campervanman]

Yep. I believe it's about 60%-70% in France and Germany.

It helps when land is 20 euros a m2.

[Executive Sadman]

I used to work at a housebuilder some years back, in the 'scheduling department' and still have loads of materials schedules lying around so was able to recently price up all the materials costs of building a house using the internet to find the cheapest suppliers. £20-30k in materials would get you a basic 3 bed, traditional brick+block detached house. I guess another 20-30k labour, and maybe 20k to bring all utilities from the street to the plot. As much or as little as you want on kitchens and bathrooms. Minus land though, theres no reason a house shouldnt cost much more than £70-80k.

[The Spaniard]

There was a politician called Boles

Who thought he’d give land to the proles

They’d construct their own houses

Wearing bum-cleavage trousers

And drink tea and eat bacon fat rolls

[Venger]

I'm surprised at the 12 plots figure.

Suspicious of it. What's the process for application? Why is someone entitled to have a plot free or highly-subsidised, kept off the market, not realising market value for the state?

In my first summer job I witnessed senior woman pick 2 winners from bags full of entrants, for x2 £100 prizes. Young people who had entered their details at a Higher Education event. She picked card after card out the bags, discarding ones she didn't like back into the bags, until she found 2 she likes the look of. Probably favouring them from their names or addresses. These going to go to some young connected Tory/Labour boy types?

Young people who cannot afford to buy somewhere to live should be handed plots of state-owned land so they can build homes of their own, the planning minister, Nick Boles, has suggested.

[terryturbojr]

It helps when land is 20 euros a m2.

Well it is and it isn't.

If you want to buy a plot in Paris it will be the same/more than in London.

Elsewhere, in more spacious locations the reason for the disparity is because of the artificial scarcity created by our government/planning system. French and German governments seem to realise that when a population grows you need to release more land for planning and so create plots around villages and towns, allowing people to build homes where they grew up, reducing (building) land scarcity and so pushing prices down. The price shouldn't really affect the ratio of self-build though anyway, just total cost of properties, however they're built. Our government could reduce/remove the disparity by adopting similar methods of land sales.

I think the difference probably has many reasons. Lack of plots, trickiness to get planning permission (so weighting in favour or large specialist developers with experience), building density requirements specified by councils not conducive to small developers, lack of finance options (this is probably circular - self-build is niche so banks have no experience financing, the lack of finance keeps self-build niche), corrupt planning system favours big developers who can give back handers etc.

A concerted effort by the government to remedy the plot/planning aspects would be a big step towards increasing the ratio though.

[SNACR]

Quite easy, buy a plot and then order a home from a catologue, and buy a kit from one of the German and Polish manufacturers and it comes on the back of lorry. With the concrete base in place its up within days and you can move in within weeks.

http://www.weberhaus.co.uk/houses.html

I think in many Euro countries self build is about 60% of the market. Its complicated here by the cost of land and lack of permission which make self build only the preserve of the rich.

Yes, I think because of Grand Designs, the phrase 'self-build' for most people, in this country, has become synonymous with tosser architects from London building a car showroom in a field to live in ride the property bubble.

[Executive Sadman]

I thought there would be some more and maybe that amount (the 130plots) is actually more like.

But if they want to make any impression on the 200k+ that has been suggested as the minimum per annum ,

then they need to do a minimum of 5% ie 10k plots per year and that would need to be distributed across

the country or at least the south east (?).

Of course the question is at what price - a give away - ha bloody ha (but if they do then I want one as well),

or at agricultural prices (~1k per plot) or at current building plot prices (?) as a nice little earner for the gov?

altho I think I would rather the profit (building plot price vs agri land price) went to the gov than to farmers or

people with a large garden - but I would rather see the end of that practice - how , maybe tax land gains at 95% ?

I think if this became common practice then best format would be a group of people getting together to purchase

say 12 plots worth and hiring someone to supervise or do the build .(as suggested by campervanman )

I think we all know the answer to that. Given the govt wont overhaul the money system until it collapses, theyll continue with the housing as a means to inject credit into the economy method, and attempt to get as high a price possible. Most the planning applications around here have already been on council owned land, as it provides about the only avenue left to make a dent in their pensions deficits.

Besides, as far as I can tell its not self build in the normal sense of the word, ie an individual building a house for him/herself. Rather small developers.

http://www.homesandcommunities.co.uk/ourwork/custom-build

In fact it sounds exactly like a bailout for local developers.

[campervanman]

Yes, I think because of Grand Designs, the phrase 'self-build' for most people, in this country, has become synonymous with tosser architects from London building a car showroom in a field to live in ride the property bubble.

Interestingly there seem to be several articles in Grand Designs magazine on these. Any idea of the build cost per m2 excluding land?

[@contradevian]

Yes, I think because of Grand Designs, the phrase 'self-build' for most people, in this country, has become synonymous with tosser architects from London building a car showroom in a field to live in ride the property bubble.

There is a digital channel (Home I think) which is non stop property p0rn, but they have a show presented by Amanda Lamb on flat pack homes.

A lot of it is boomers wanting a flat pack mansion, for those 'guests to stay' but the kind of thing I'm looking for is the kind of thing a boomer would put up in the back garden, as a 'studio' or 'spare bedroom' or the 'home office.' Gotta be possible.

To some extent I think Grand Designs is a bit of propaganda to make self build appear to be beyond the reach of normal folk, where abroad its the norm. Then again the sheer cost of scarce land with permission in the UK usually dictates than only a boomer mansion is viable.

You can visit a factory in Germany and pick everything down to the finest details, such as the bathroom tiles. A few months later, the whole thing gets delivered. None of the drama really of Grand Designs.

Edited November 23, 2013 by aSecureTenant

[terryturbojr]

Interestingly there seem to be several articles in Grand Designs magazine on these. Any idea of the build cost per m2 excluding land?

Depends what you go for.

A traditional build probably under £1000/m2, so less than £100k build for a 100m2 3-bed house.

I looked into a flat pack Huf Haus recently at that was more like £3k/m2. So a damn expensive £300k for the same size house, and that's without any land.