How did we get here..
Despite watching lots of Grand Designs, building a house wasn’t something I’d ever considered until about 18 months ago. Fast forward to today and we’ve bought a plot, instructed an architect, and I’ve traded my evening telly time for browsing the Buildhub forum. So how did we get here?
My partner and I want to start a family but agreed that we wanted to move into something larger first. We drew up a list of what we wanted and started our search. After months of searching / viewing we began to realise that we were going to be spending a huge amount of money just to buy something that was ‘kind of’ what we wanted. Still, what else could we do?
Then I stumbled across Danwood – the polish prefab house firm – and had my eyes opened to the world of self-building. I paused the depressing Rightmove search and started reading in earnest. We went to some self-build shows, read huge amounts online, and eventually decided to swap Rightmove for Plotfinder. Our hope was to build near where we live currently (to be near family / friends and have easy access to London for work) but had no luck finding anything suitable or affordable.
Funnily enough, it was Rightmove that came to the rescue. One night my partner sent me a link to a bungalow. It was small, in a sorry state, and well over our plot budget… But it sat on a good-sized plot and was in a great location for us. We called the estate agent to arrange a viewing and were politely told to eff-off as they’d accepted an offer from a developer. Back to square one.
2 weeks later I got a phone call from the estate agent asking if we were still interested in a viewing. The developer’s financing fell through in the wake of the Kamikwasi ‘mini’ budget and the bungalow was back on the market. We went for a viewing that evening, put in an offer, and a few months later the bungalow was ours!
We completed at the end of 2022 and have since appointed an architect but I’ll cover that, and other bits, in a separate post.
Thanks for reading - I look forward to sharing our inevitable ups and downs as we move along.
Edited by Beechgate
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