Lorenz

Think it depends if you know where to get the bargains, if shopping off the peg and paying workers, no chance. Do remember a chap from London who had a place he was doing on the Orkneys, who picked up a bunch of windows from me, (which we had an excess of), on his way up there. That will have saved him a few thousands. Just for example.

Trying I guess, it was not up for sale at a reduced price and the rent they are asking is at the higher level. We rent in the next village and have a larger house and pay substantially less. Most agricultural tie properties I see, are usually in a very bad condition and would be cheaper than local houses anyway? This one is in good condition, was up for sale at a high price and is now up for rent at a high price and does not mention that renters need to be involved in ag. Seems to me this is just a method of keeping small properties in the hands of local farmers? Larger farmhouses with lots of land, do not have agricultural ties, does not make sense to me.

It is up at £1750 a month and does not mention the Tie, but doubt any agricultural worker would pay that anyway.

Seen a property come up for rent today, wasn't looking, it popped up on facebook. It was for sale some months back and I do not know if it has actually sold, it still is not showing up. But my question is, if the place can only be sold to someone in agriculture, I would have thought it would only be allowed to be rented to someone in ag, if this is right, then they should let people buy the house and rent the land to a farmer surely?

But they are kept in power by the systems in place and there is a lot of money around the building game, so they do not want to open it up, when so much can be gained and would appear to be gained. Yes if people join together, but where are the local self build groups? I agree, I had a french girlfriend and her parents bought their building plot from the local council in the Champagne area, the whole estate was like that, they paid 1 or 2 thousand for the serviced plots, and then another 80k for a house of their choice to be built and very nice the whole estate was. I think it can still be done over there as you can pick any house off the peg with any builder, which already have passed approval. Prices seem to be coming down to me, the real selling price and asking prices also seem to be coming down. I have always liked old houses, but they are increasingly becoming dead ducks as maintaining them is becoming very expensive, Would like to build as near to passive as possible, but I also have to compare that to how much an old one will cost to buy and maintain and if they come down far enough, they maybe an option. There is not the immigration anymore, the government statistics are based on old data, I expect to see the population declining and many houses will be empty now as europeans move to other countries in europe away from the UK.

I don't think they would want to do that, I am sure they could do it, but certain organisations would loose a lot of donations.....

How many steps are there to registering to be on the self build register? Apparently, registering is just the first of many steps to register, sounds like gobbledygook to me?

This is not a discount, this is the percentage they get back at the end of the year or whatever period they arrange. Does not show on the bill, one of the perks, don't know who it goes to when councils etc pay the full price.

I am just reading this and part of the choice of the builder is going to be how much he gets back from the merchant. 10-20% seems normal. It is a problem if you let your builder go and try to replace or get your money back on things he ordered wrongly and also find you have been paying for other things that have not been used on your job.

Or horses it would seem? Glad for the input, seen quite few recent barns near me being converted or a completely new house being built. Just been small horse paddocks. All a farmer needs do is keep planting barns

But if he had built a barn, (I do not know what the land is like) he would be allowed to convert it to a house under current legislation without planning even, I have read?

Why are they using standard mortar at all, it should be thin joints with aerated concrete? As on the video, if the builders cannot be bothered to build with the system and it cracks around windows etc, it is the builders to blame and if they were supposed to use rebar in these areas should not be difficult to see if they left it out. I have known builders leave rebar out of a ring beam.

That is what I suspected, the questions seemed to be aimed at figuring out how much they could charge for things. Pity the house building market is such a monopoly, I remember in France years ago that people could buy a serviced building plot from the council ( it wasn't much) and then could choose any number of different companies to come and build a house for them. This created competition. At present I am not seeing houses built for the new normal, and new builds seem to be quite small and double what nearby houses of similar size are on the market for. We are in an old house, but if we bought it, firstly we could not bring it up to a modern standard, but the works we could do would cost about the same as building a decent house up to modern standards. Seems like looking for a run down bungalow as a rebuild site is the way to go, though I see a great many modern barns being converted, I wonder how to go about that?

I just saw last week, that the government is supposedly supporting self build and have registered I hope, for Stroud area, but no acknowledgement from them yet. Wondering if that scheme is working at all and if there are any self build groups in the South of Gloucestershire? Was thinking of Aerated concrete as I have seen it used a lot abroad. Oak etc seem more complicated these days. Off Grid would be something I would like to do and be near passive with a few acres, not sure how open planners are to that. We have 4 children and not really seeing anything we like except those with an agricultural tie. Other places are asking more than I think they are worth, especially new builds and don't have space for us to do our business, we want to work from home.