william green Posted July 14 Share Posted July 14 So i'm homeless in temporary accommodation and its a small dingy depressing hotel room. Im also on the right to build waiting list for land which should be given to me within the next year. I have no building experience and i want to learn how to build a house. From what i've heard from other homeless people, i could be stuck in temporary accommodation for years. I want to do a fast-track home building course and then build my own home within 15 months. Any advice and tips are greatly appreciated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Punter Posted July 14 Share Posted July 14 Hello and welcome. It will take far longer than 15 months and will cost at least £1000 per square metre, maybe several times that. If you are given a plot of land, as an interim you could put a caravan on it, then at least you are master of your own domain. Good luck! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gus Potter Posted July 14 Share Posted July 14 27 minutes ago, william green said: Any advice and tips are greatly appreciated. Are you able to get some work in the building trade even part time at the weekends? This is where you will be able to supplement your academic learning with hands on stuff. If possible get work local to where you want to build.. much of self building is about contacts.. the folk you know, the ones who do a good job and have "flexible methods" of payment. It is possible I think. I'm a firm believer that if you work hard you generate your own luck. Also, at times, you may feel that this is a mountain too high to climb. Do it in small stages.. get to base camp first then plan and prepare for the next part of the ascent. I wish you all the best and keep BH folks updated if you can. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jilly Posted July 14 Share Posted July 14 (edited) Hello! Someone suggested on here ages ago that it would be a great idea to have some kind of list where people could go and lend a hand and learn on the job. In reality, I don’t think it happened. Forgive me, but are you certain the council will give you land with planning permission? All the people on here mostly have reasonable means and find planning permission one of the most difficult parts. They often have a trade or are very good at DIY and teach themselves as they go along. It is a huge undertaking, but a wonderful long term ambition. Is yours an experimental scheme by one local authority or housing association? I know of someone who went to ‘building school’ before attempting his house renovation. You could learn a trade in that time and be in a good position to collaborate with other self builders like Graven Hill. Carpentry skills would be very useful generally. Many self builders rough it in a caravan during the build to save money. All the best. Edited July 14 by Jilly 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted July 14 Share Posted July 14 Welcome A lot of people live in an onsite caravan when they build their dream homes. If you can afford a plot with planning permission, you may be allowed to put a static on it, then you have until the planning runs out to learn how to build a house. There are some strange rules in some local authority areas regarding the Community Infrastructure Levy, which can be very costly if you breach them. But as said above, get some work with builders, then you learn a bit and get a decent contact list of who to use. If you want to go back to college, become an electrician (piss easy if you are numerate) or plumber (just piss everywhere). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
garrymartin Posted July 14 Share Posted July 14 If we assume by the "Right to Build waiting list" you mean you are on the Self-Build and Custom Housebuilding Register of your Local Authority (or more than one Register perhaps), then I hate to be the one to break it to you, but they aren't going to provide you with a plot. At best, you'll get weekly updates from your LPA on applications that have been allowed, including those designated as self-build or for custom housing. You may to able to approach someone who has gained permission and buy a plot from them, or you may be able to find a plot of your own and apply for permission, but it isn't going to just drop into your lap because you are on the list, and it certainly isn't going to be "given to you". I wish you well and hope you find yourself in a better position soon. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nod Posted July 14 Share Posted July 14 2 hours ago, garrymartin said: If we assume by the "Right to Build waiting list" you mean you are on the Self-Build and Custom Housebuilding Register of your Local Authority (or more than one Register perhaps), then I hate to be the one to break it to you, but they aren't going to provide you with a plot. At best, you'll get weekly updates from your LPA on applications that have been allowed, including those designated as self-build or for custom housing. You may to able to approach someone who has gained permission and buy a plot from them, or you may be able to find a plot of your own and apply for permission, but it isn't going to just drop into your lap because you are on the list, and it certainly isn't going to be "given to you". I wish you well and hope you find yourself in a better position soon. Good post One of the above should have pointed this out 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
william green Posted July 14 Author Share Posted July 14 4 hours ago, Mr Punter said: Hello and welcome. It will take far longer than 15 months and will cost at least £1000 per square metre, maybe several times that. If you are given a plot of land, as an interim you could put a caravan on it, then at least you are master of your own domain. Good luck! Could i self build a micro house and buy the land for £160,000? i just needs a small home, single dude. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Thomas Posted July 14 Share Posted July 14 One place left on https://cat.org.uk/events/build-a-tiny-house-test-august-2024/ 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Posted July 14 Share Posted July 14 4 hours ago, william green said: I want to do a fast-track home building course and then build my own home within 15 months. You don't hear about them much these days, but back in the 80s there was an uptick in community self-build schemes (also known as self-build co-operatives and various other names). They do still happen, and if you can find others interested, you could potentially set one up. It's the sort of things that councils once supported / help organise. Normally they employed a pro site manager and had a mix of people - some with building trades knowledge, others none. The idea was often to build everyone a house of similar size, so typically each contributed the same number of hours and those without skills learnt as they went. Though there are other models. More reading at https://mycommunity.org.uk/what-is-a-community-self-build-housing-project 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nod Posted July 15 Share Posted July 15 (edited) 6 hours ago, Mike said: You don't hear about them much these days, but back in the 80s there was an uptick in community self-build schemes (also known as self-build co-operatives and various other names). They do still happen, and if you can find others interested, you could potentially set one up. It's the sort of things that councils once supported / help organise. Normally they employed a pro site manager and had a mix of people - some with building trades knowledge, others none. The idea was often to build everyone a house of similar size, so typically each contributed the same number of hours and those without skills learnt as they went. Though there are other models. More reading at https://mycommunity.org.uk/what-is-a-community-self-build-housing-project Wadsworth and Saxon where the main players in my area They ran quite a few successful schemes No money upfront There only criteria was that you had a full time job and was able to get a mortgage at the end of the project A minimum of 20 hours per week was also pledged Edited July 15 by nod 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jilly Posted July 15 Share Posted July 15 It’s the land price and planning permission (PP) which are the issue. There are places in the country where land is just a few £1000 per acre (without planning, so you can’t just rock up with a caravan), right through to the south east, where land with pp can fetch £million/acre. You also have to consider the viability, as there are areas where you can buy a nice ready made house for £150k and there’s no point building. Morally, £160k ought to be enough, but the answer is ‘it depends’ and it might not be enough for the land purchase too. Eg I spent £25k just on all the fees, bats etc, all risk money, to try to get planning, (luckily successful) so it’s very scary. My advice would be: keep your dream, keep saving and learning and maybe consider moving to a cheaper part of the country where your dream might be doable. You can build a mobile tiny/ microhome, for much less, but of course you need somewhere put it. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Jones Posted July 15 Share Posted July 15 first priority is get yourself a trade, only input from you is turn up everyday, 10 mins early and graft. This you can do in the morning, call any local builder tell them you will labour for the week for free if they give you a shot. Once your working full time next week watxch and learn, find one of the trades that you enjoy and crack on with it. Save save save. After a year you will have a network of mates in the trade to help you. It's all there waiting for you. upto you. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nickfromwales Posted July 15 Share Posted July 15 Hi mate. To give you a reality check, this sounds like way too steep a learning curve, in too short a space of time, on an extremely fragile budget (being polite there btw). As above, £160k will get you the keys to a house you can just walk in to and put your toothbrush in the holder, switch the telly on, and open a beer. So, question has to be; “Why not take this simple route vs the leap into the unknown”? 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ToughButterCup Posted July 15 Share Posted July 15 21 hours ago, william green said: So i'm homeless in temporary accommodation and its a small dingy depressing hotel room.... You've had enough haven't you. Pissed off doesn't begin to cover how you feel. And you find this site and a bell goes off in your head. You read like mad and it looks like you might be able to do something which means you can be in charge of your own destiny. Hope. Been there. It's *king awful. Nobody can take that hope away from you. Nobody. So how about this.... Read this site from end to end. Look at the vast array of problems we all help one another with. Every single one of them (almost) is solvable. None of us here are quitters. None. Warm your hands on the warmth and energy this site gives all of us who decide to give as well as receive. Make a list of the main things that are between your current situation and your aim. Search here (buildhub) on how we've all sorted out exactly the same ones a s you have now. Read in detail. Then work out how you are going to solve all of those problems. One by one. Don't worry about then order in which you solve them. They're all related. Remember how pissed off you are now and use that to reach your aim. Not having enough money is an asset. It makes you think. Hard. Being hard up is no excuse not to start and keep trying. We have taken about 35 or so years (Land bought 1980s) And don't give up. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted July 15 Share Posted July 15 17 minutes ago, ToughButterCup said: None of us here are quitters. None Not strictly true. One of our members has abandoned his project. There is lessons to be learnt about doing it all yourself, on a tight budget, and then falling when the end is almost in sight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lofty718 Posted July 15 Share Posted July 15 (edited) The big issue I'm seeing here is that you think because you are on that list that you will actually get a piece of landed handed to you for diddly squat I cannot imagine many self builders with this kind of freebie attitude going very far, so I think more changes need to be made than just learning to build. It takes a lot of hard graft to get yourself in a position to acquire land, a lot of hard graft to manage a building project and an obscene amount of graft to self build your own plot from scratch on the tools yourself. Edited July 15 by Lofty718 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jilly Posted July 15 Share Posted July 15 (edited) @william greenHave you heard of the schemes where you can buy a house for £1 provided you commit to doing it up? Quite a few caveats, but might be worth exploring? Also, there is a similar scheme in Italy where you can buy a house for 1 Euro. Edited July 15 by Jilly Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Posted July 15 Share Posted July 15 37 minutes ago, Jilly said: Have you heard of the schemes where you can buy a house for £1 provided you commit to doing it up? Quite a few caveats, but might be worth exploring? Also, there is a similar scheme in Italy where you can buy a house for 1 Euro. May be worth looking at in the UK, but since Brexit it's not going to work in the EU - except for anyone rich enough to buy a local passport, or (if the rules allow it) as a holiday home. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LSB Posted July 16 Share Posted July 16 13 hours ago, Jilly said: @william greenHave you heard of the schemes where you can buy a house for £1 provided you commit to doing it up? Quite a few caveats, but might be worth exploring? Also, there is a similar scheme in Italy where you can buy a house for 1 Euro. that's what Alan Carr and Amanda Holden did, but I expect they had lots of legal peeps behind them and no mention of a limited budget to do up. Then being sold for charity I believe 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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