New concept to make self and custom build easier and more accessible.

[Roger440]

23 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

Why do people think that self building a home is cheaper, and better, that getting professionals to do it.

Just imagine what carnage there would be on the roads if people built their own bicycles from components, let alone a motorbike or car.

 

This comment, and that of Ed, is so true.

 

The building game is in the dark ages, everything is a one off, even for volume builders. Its bonkers.

 

I cant understand why no big corparate has entered the marke with a disruptive product thats better. Its happened in every other sector one can think of, but building seems stragely "off limits"

 

And so we continue to mess about, paddling in mud, mixing up concrete, mortar and plaster, and chopping up bits of wood in said mud to build stuff!

 

One day someone will.......................................

 

[saveasteading]

33 minutes ago, Roger440 said:

lining other peoples pockets for reports, surveys, etc etc.

 I don't agree  with that.  we need legislation and control of it.

Yes there are also specialists who write themselves in to planning control.

The archaeologist or naturalist who says that it may be a sensitive site and that they themselves should be paid to research further.

(I'm not mentioning these at random, and it bothered me a lot at the time)

But a good planning agent or designer can cut through some of that. Also these costs come off the land not from the builder.

 

An acre of farm land in SE England is worth £10,000.   Get planning permission and that becomes 800k to £1M or even much more. £50k may go to the community.

Someone's garden worth £30k to the house value sells for £200k with permission for a house.

 

I'd be interested to hear the equivalents around the country.

 

These windfalls are where the money goes.

Another discussion might be on why the big sites sell for so much money when years before they were worth next to nothing... is there a value below which they will not stoop?

and is there a value above which the developers wont increase. None of them.

[Roger440]

27 minutes ago, saveasteading said:

 I don't agree  with that.  we need legislation and control of it.

Yes there are also specialists who write themselves in to planning control.

The archaeologist or naturalist who says that it may be a sensitive site and that they themselves should be paid to research further.

(I'm not mentioning these at random, and it bothered me a lot at the time)

But a good planning agent or designer can cut through some of that. Also these costs come off the land not from the builder.

 

An acre of farm land in SE England is worth £10,000.   Get planning permission and that becomes 800k to £1M or even much more. £50k may go to the community.

Someone's garden worth £30k to the house value sells for £200k with permission for a house.

 

I'd be interested to hear the equivalents around the country.

 

These windfalls are where the money goes.

Another discussion might be on why the big sites sell for so much money when years before they were worth next to nothing... is there a value below which they will not stoop?

and is there a value above which the developers wont increase. None of them.

 

You might not agree with my assesment of lining pockets, but that its often 10's thousand i dont think is really debateable. 

 

As each year rolls by, more and more "stuff" gets added. Councils just demanding a report on everything, soil contamination, newts, bats, archealogical digs etc. Even where this is absolutely no evidence that its needed. But it generates an industry of people who are seen/licensed/recognised as experts in those field, who all charge handsomely for often very little. You suggest it can (could?) be reduced with a good planning agent. Sure. But again, more (unknown) costs. They charge handsomely too.

 

Eventually (well in some places already have) we arrive at a point where its simply uneconomic to build at all as the "non building" costs just keep going up. Which of course happens everytime government "meddles" and adds more layers of complexity. I saw the £76K figure reported. In some of the comments a couple of developers (big ones) pointed out that the report did not include planning costs (which it didnt). One of them said his planning costs per unit were greater than the £76k.

 

Ok, all anecdotal, but its all adding up. Theres someone on here who paid over £10k for a bat survey!! Thats just ludicrous.

 

There are few people willing to enter into building there own house when there are so many costs that cannot be known before you start. Of course there are a few with unlimited cash, and thats great for them, but thats not most people.

 

That so many on here manage to see it through to the end, is in itself amazing, and hats off to those that do. I couldnt cope with that level of financial uncertainty as i couldnt simply rustle up and exta 20, 30, 40k based on a councils whim.

 

The thread started around comments about what stops more people self building. 

Edited August 27 by Roger440

[MPx]

On 26/08/2026 at 18:39, SteamyTea said:

Why do people think that self building a home is cheaper, and better, that getting professionals to do it.

Just imagine what carnage there would be on the roads if people built their own bicycles from components, let alone a motorbike or car.

I never expected it to be cheaper

I always expect it to be better than getting professionals to do it

Many years ago I did build myself a car - great fun to do and use.  No carnage.

 

The problem with "professionals" is that its inherent to try to make as good a living as possible.  To do this they must take the minimum amount of time and move on to the next job.  If there is any competition they price low to get the work, then work down to the price doing all sorts of short cuts and bodges.

 

Any whiff of its not so much the price as the quality of work that's important to me and its like having "mug" tattooed across my forehead and ridiculous numbers spring forth - and even if agreed, the speed at all costs working methods are so ingrained the attention to detail still doesn't happen.  Example: One of my pet hates are the plastic inserts that are used to edge tiles.  To avoid that I spend ages mitering the tiles around window reveals and the like giving an even grout line all through.  I expect a professional could do that probably better and quicker than I can - but none do - or at least none that I've ever come across and I've seen a lot of tiled bathrooms in my life.  You see mostly plastic, some up market metal can look better, and some make no attempt at all and just leave the tile edge on show.  But we all like different things and that choice obviously suits most.  Me - I'd rather do it myself and get a "better" result.

[Ed_]

2 minutes ago, Roger440 said:

You might not agree with my assesment of lining pockets, but that its often 10's thousand i dont think is really debateable. 

I think there are two big issues with the "stuff":

1- it disproportionately affects lower budget builds. 

2- it mostly has to be paid out early, sometimes years before even starting the build, this can be challenging financially.

 

A lot of this is ripe for disruption but I fear the self build market is too small to make the development costs worthwhile.

16 minutes ago, MPx said:

If there is any competition they price low to get the work, then work down to the price doing all sorts of short cuts and bodges.

@Gus Potterhas written persuasively in other threads about the savings from getting a good designer/engineer in early. It seems to me the issue is that obviously makes that professional more expensive, and how does a self builder separate someone who is offering a better service from someone who is just charging more? There is no way of knowing whether a professional has settled for the first option they found or considered 10. This is why I try to do as much as possible myself, I'd rather die by my own mistakes, at least I will have learnt something!

[Great_scot_selfbuild]

35 minutes ago, Roger440 said:

You might not agree with my assesment of lining pockets, but that its often 10's thousand i dont think is really debateable. 

I was quoted over £10k for a landscape visual impact assessment (this was the most likely tactic for council to refuse my planning application. I enddd up writing my own (despite some comments that it needed to be by someone with Landscape architectural post-nominals or such).

 

At some point I’ll revisit my costings and share as much as I can - we bought land without any PP and worked very hard to achieve it, against some very strong advice that it was ‘nigh on impossible’. 

[Roger440]

1 hour ago, Great_scot_selfbuild said:

I was quoted over £10k for a landscape visual impact assessment (this was the most likely tactic for council to refuse my planning application. I enddd up writing my own (despite some comments that it needed to be by someone with Landscape architectural post-nominals or such).

 

At some point I’ll revisit my costings and share as much as I can - we bought land without any PP and worked very hard to achieve it, against some very strong advice that it was ‘nigh on impossible’. 

 

Good work if you can pull it off.

 

 

[Post and beam]

12 hours ago, Great_scot_selfbuild said:

I was quoted over £10k for a landscape visual impact assessment

  The first thing i would do in any circumstance like this if i had to do it today would be CoPilot Researcher mode. Or Claude.

I am more impressed each day with what AI can do for us.

 

This week, and in relation to my lease enfranchisement i asked it to look for any precedent of a 500 year old lease from the 16th century with a lost Freeholder. 15 minutes thinking and bingo a house in Leeds. 

It gave me names, dates, Court transcripts of the decision and strategies how to weave the relevant points into my own case.

 

Apologies thats going off topic a little too far.  You get the point though.

[Great_scot_selfbuild]

1 minute ago, Post and beam said:

if i had to do it today would be CoPilot Researcher mode.

Absolutely. As it was, I did all my planning and documents the old way before discovering the utility of AI for adding things like this. I would absolutely take this approach in the future with similar tasks.

[Roger440]

4 hours ago, Post and beam said:

  The first thing i would do in any circumstance like this if i had to do it today would be CoPilot Researcher mode. Or Claude.

I am more impressed each day with what AI can do for us.

 

This week, and in relation to my lease enfranchisement i asked it to look for any precedent of a 500 year old lease from the 16th century with a lost Freeholder. 15 minutes thinking and bingo a house in Leeds. 

It gave me names, dates, Court transcripts of the decision and strategies how to weave the relevant points into my own case.

 

Apologies thats going off topic a little too far.  You get the point though.

 

This is all wonderful. I can get AI to do my structural  calculations too, or SAP report, but the BCO wont accept them. Has to be from a competent person. Even if that same person might be using the exact same method.

 

Though "competent" is open, currently, to interpretation. I imagine that will change, bringing yet another layer of cost and complexity to bear.

[Indy]

2 hours ago, Roger440 said:

 

This is all wonderful. I can get AI to do my structural  calculations too, or SAP report, but the BCO wont accept them. Has to be from a competent person. Even if that same person might be using the exact same method.

 

Though "competent" is open, currently, to interpretation. I imagine that will change, bringing yet another layer of cost and complexity to bear.

There’s a material difference between something like a landscape visual assessment and structural engineering calcs.

 

The former is a nonsensical piece of paper that needs to be produced to check a box on the planning application. Money down the drain.
 

The latter is integral to the safety of the house and its inhabitants, and something I would gladly pay for an expert to do. 

[Square Feet]

On 27/08/2026 at 17:50, Roger440 said:

Beyond project management, which has its place, though not for me, im really not clear what you are offering. Being blunt, sounds like another "cost" thats adds little if anything to the task of getting a house built. Maybe ive misunderstood?

I'm no offering anything 😂 The guy who started the original post might be though.......

[Gus Potter]

On 28/08/2026 at 13:33, Roger440 said:

This is all wonderful. I can get AI to do my structural  calculations too, or SAP report, but the BCO wont accept them. Has to be from a competent person. Even if that same person might be using the exact same method.

 

Though "competent" is open, currently, to interpretation. I imagine that will change, bringing yet another layer of cost and complexity to bear.

In my day job I sometimes ask AI for it's calculations for a bit of fun! A lot of the time I find it's completely wrong! I checked a beam design against AI and found it to be a factor of ten out, on the unsafe side. One of the bits it missed was the destabilising loads ( an unrestrained load applied to the top flange) loads, the lack of adequate lateral restraint and the support conditions, all that lead to is being miles unsafe.  

 

Now AI aggregates information, you could have ten undergraduates all uploading their student projects and AI thinks.. this is right, but it's dangerous bollocks!

 

There is good reason for BC to reject you! If you want to use AI to generate calcs then you have to be competent enough to make sure it's not rubbish.

 

By all means use AI to do the donkey work for you, but unless you know what you are doing, have the knowledge to understand what the calculations mean  then you are an idiot!

[Gus Potter]

On 27/08/2026 at 19:05, MPx said:

The problem with "professionals" is that its inherent to try to make as good a living as possible.  To do this they must take the minimum amount of time and move on to the next job.  If there is any competition they price low to get the work, then work down to the price doing all sorts of short cuts and bodges.

 

On 27/08/2026 at 19:26, Ed_ said:

"Me Gus" to add to the quote has written persuasively in other threads about the savings from getting a good designer/engineer in early. It seems to me the issue is that obviously makes that professional more expensive, and how does a self builder separate someone who is offering a better service from someone who is just charging more? There is no way of knowing whether a professional has settled for the first option they found or considered 10. This is why I try to do as much as possible myself, I'd rather die by my own mistakes, at least I will have learnt something!

Reading a lot of these posts it's pretty clear that that many on BH don't have a high opinion of folk like me who design as a day job. I can see many professionals have lost their compass and are not delivering value for money and are not that good at running a business, hence the poor service delivery. I've been in the construction industry for over 40 years, 20 spent as a contractor running my own business' , did my own self build, really pretty much all by myself on the tools ( took me three years) then off to uni to be an Engineer, now for the last ten years I wear two hats as an Engineer and Architectural designer. Thus have a fairly rounded view of the in and outs of this. I can say that in the last 20 years there has been a race to the bottom, not just from designers,  but also say the timber frame suppliers, ground works designers ( UFH and rafts etc)  and designers who think that if they curtail their design brief, caveat it a lot the money is going to flow.

 

But in the long term it doesn’t, as often the key to good business is repeat business, recommendation, even in the short term cutting you brief down often leads to problems, queries, design mistakes that just eat into your profit and leads to potential claims or Clients rightfully withholding money.

 

Ok, lets look at some financials. The bottom line for a new self builder ( not someone who works in the trade with contacts) is the tendency to split each element into work packages, say foundations, timber frame and roof ect. Each package supplier takes the cream out of the job, leaving nothing for the self builder. Then you have planning and BC regs on top not least, that all adds to the cost. 

 

I work on a lot of projects where I'm involved holistically. I work very closely with the Client, not just as a designer but also do hand holding and participate in all of the design. 

 

Now to be blunt. Say for a self build the design fee is £10k. An experienced chippy ( joiner may cost you £250 a day, a labourer £150 as day, total 2.0k per week. All I have to do to wash my face is to save you a few weeks, just on the labour alone and I have well and truly washed my face! 

 

The pendulum is swinging back where folk are clocking that we need to "go back to the old days", but now you need someone like me who can cope with the modern code requirements for example, and the modern way of doing business., much less trust and more hard arse stuff. 

 

I get this kind of business where folk are happy to pay me a bit more as I can guide them, hold their hand and most importantly we all have fun, we do whacky designs that you only get to do on self builds! We also tend to avoid " work packages where we can, say from MBC et al and keep the cream to ourselves. This also often helps cash flow and gives the Client more control on day to day site activity. 

 

Now in the round if you want to make some money then try and find a designer like me that is local to you, with good contacts. 

 

 

[Roger440]

21 hours ago, Gus Potter said:

In my day job I sometimes ask AI for it's calculations for a bit of fun! A lot of the time I find it's completely wrong! I checked a beam design against AI and found it to be a factor of ten out, on the unsafe side. One of the bits it missed was the destabilising loads ( an unrestrained load applied to the top flange) loads, the lack of adequate lateral restraint and the support conditions, all that lead to is being miles unsafe.  

 

Now AI aggregates information, you could have ten undergraduates all uploading their student projects and AI thinks.. this is right, but it's dangerous bollocks!

 

There is good reason for BC to reject you! If you want to use AI to generate calcs then you have to be competent enough to make sure it's not rubbish.

 

By all means use AI to do the donkey work for you, but unless you know what you are doing, have the knowledge to understand what the calculations mean  then you are an idiot!

 

But as you know, when i needed an SE, i used one.............................

[Gus Potter]

On 02/09/2026 at 20:12, Roger440 said:

But as you know, when i needed an SE, i used one.

You did, no offence intended!

 

I layed in a bit as AI is more dangerous than not if you try and get it to do SE stuff. 

[Gus Potter]

On 30/08/2026 at 21:39, Square Feet said:

I'm no offering anything

You don't need to.

 

For all: The following assumes you are not in the building trade, have all the advantages that that brings. It's intended to appeal to folk on a budget, possibly first time self builders that are willing to learn and invest time. 

 

As I've said before, in the old days self building was a great money spinner even if you were a complete idiot. Property prices were achieving a year on year 10% at a minimum increase in value. Thus on a two year build the land just alone would increase in value. 

 

The game is changed now. For a while it worked where you could go to a TF company, say Scot frame etc, AFD foundation design were doing a lot of really great stuff, Tanners Structural Design were chipping in etc. for example and others for "work packages" and it still stacked up, the profit was less for the novice self builder but still worth a go.  You still got a return from "managing the project"

 

One of the main problems I see at the moment is not just the regulatory stuff (Planning and BC), it's actually the idea that you can put different work packages together without dealing with the interfaces, where the hidden cost lies. We could describe this as "day works", expensive! The "work package" providers are now taking too much cream, there is little left for the self builder, and the risk remains the same.

 

Designers are certainly not helping. Few if any take the time to help you coordinate, some of this is bad practice, but also, there is tendency for folk to think good designers are like washing machine engineers, we are not here to fix your washing machine. In the round all the cream is taken out the project before you get a shout. 

 

One fundamental key to a good self build is to not pay too much for the land. A while ago you could buy a nice flat grass plot, easy services and so on. But these now are less attractive as they command a high price. What is attractive is a cracking site, great views, but brown field. In other words maybe a bit contaminated, hard to service for example. if you crack that nut you can get it cheep. The big developers are not interested, your local builder with say 10 men is not interested as they will have to pay for professional advice, they look for the easy route. This puts you in a pretty good negotiating position if you can identify what's wrong with the site and explain to the seller, this is is a good offer I'm making, and here is why. 

 

Now just say you could get a 100k plot for 70k by explaining to the seller, you are selling a pig in poke. To do that you need to just bring forward the professional fee advice. It's not going to cost you the full whack, an advisor may give you this advice for under £1.0k. 

 

My own view is that it's now time to go back and consider old school stuff, say getting local ground workers in to do the founds, joiners to stick build the TF, slaters for the roof. You buy the materials, you then own them, eases cash flow. I think this can deliver a good bit of profit! 

 

In summary I do think self build can be profitable, we just need to go back to old school stuff and the basic laws of business. But adapt with a view to say modular construction. @Square Feet has some thoughts on this in fruition. 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited 14 hours ago by Gus Potter

[ProDave]

My self build journey, to illustrate how things have become harder.

 

First self build 2003.  Moving from England to the Highlands.  A big motivation of self build Vs just buy a house, was we could buy a building plot and a static caravan for cash without having to sell our old house.  If we had gone for the "simple" option of just buy a house we would have been trying to sell and buy at the same time under 2 different house buying legal systems which just sounded like a nightmare.  Plus a self lbuild had been on my bucket list for a long time.

 

That first house the only technical design input was from the timber frame company.  Total cost of all drawings planning and building warrant £2K  No surveys.  TF company was paid to build a and watertight shell and we fitted out the inside employing trades as needed.  House prices here were rising fast then, and by the time we had finished house value comfortably exceeded build cost.  That all worked out well.  IF ONLY it was still that simple.

 

A few years later we decided we wanted a smaller house, (done the 5 bedroom thing) and were lucky after some searching to find a plot 2 doors up the road from the first one.  The plan had always been start the new build, put the old house on the market and sell it to finish the new build.

 

Our timing was poor.  This was post 2008 crash and the market here was dead.  The old house was on the market for 2 years and had just 6 viewings.  My work as electrician took me all over the place, and I was seeing the same houses everywhere just stuck with a for sale board that had been there well over a year.  All the agents and any "helpful" adviser could say if it's not selling, it is over priced, reduce the asking price.  That would be all very well if you could reduce your asking price and then reduce the asking price of the house you bought.  But self build does not work like that.  Try telling a builders merchant house prices have crashed so you want all building materials reduced by a similar amount and ditto tradesmans wages.  If we had reduced the price to distress sale levels, we could very well have ended up selling our 5 bedroom house for less than the build cost of the replacement 3 bed house.  There was no way I was paying to downsize.  Our build ground to a halt with just me doing what I could but held up by bigger things needing doing.

 

Our saviour from this situation came in the form of a lady that wanted to buy the house and run it as a guest house, but could not get the funds to buy it without accounts, so her offer was to rent the house for a few years and then buy it.  So we accepted and reluctantly went back to being landlords.

 

That did eventually work out.  It ended up being 7 years rental before she finally bought it, and those 7 years of rent, pretty much paid for the completion of the new house.  So it worked out financially better just because of that.  The actual sale price of the 5 bed house was only £50K more than the build cost of the new 3 bed house.  As others have said a self build now likely costs more than the market value unless some house price inflation saves you.

 

As for complications and red tape.  The old pay the TF supplier not a lot for all the drawings seemed no longer available.  We ended up paying an architecturtal technician and a SE to produce all the drawings that cost us £10K.  We didn't have to do any surveys or that nonsense.  The only other bits of paper we had to pay for (but not on the first build) were air test, and as built EPC.     Building control seemed more stringent on the second build, with the added irritation that we had to keep paying an extra £100 per year to keep renewing the building warrant up to completion.  And self build site insurance was a LOT more expensive second time around.

[Matt Perkins]

On 25/08/2026 at 18:02, MPx said:

To me the barriers are many fold:

Finding an affordable plot in a place you'd want to live

Finding an Architect who is on the same wavelength

Getting through the broken planning systems - including paying for endless reports by "experts"

Dealing with endless planning conditions

Dealing with endless Building Control issues

Finding out enough to make an appropriate choice on construction method

Finding a builder and/or trades competent in their work, affordable, and available

Having to make many many decisions on little information and only idealised drawings for reference

Lead time from initial idea to moving in date measured in several years.

 

Or you can just put up with the utter c**p thrown up by the nationals and shortcut the whole thing to a few months.

 

 

Thanks for all your replies - wow! it has certainly sparked much discussion. This response from Mpx is particularly useful as these are all barriers that i'm hoping the venture can help overcome eventually.

 

For now though, my platform concept is simply an online marketplace/showroom for MMC builds - think of it like Amazon for homes. Users can select from a variety of customisable models, all of which have been user-reviewed and quality-assured, etc...

 

Please note this is just the initial offering; I would plan to evolve it over time to help smooth out all the hurdles noted in MPx post. 

 

I would be interested in getting your thoughts on the initial Markeplace concept? 

[Indy]

1 hour ago, Matt Perkins said:

 

Thanks for all your replies - wow! it has certainly sparked much discussion. This response from Mpx is particularly useful as these are all barriers that i'm hoping the venture can help overcome eventually.

 

For now though, my platform concept is simply an online marketplace/showroom for MMC builds - think of it like Amazon for homes. Users can select from a variety of customisable models, all of which have been user-reviewed and quality-assured, etc...

 

Please note this is just the initial offering; I would plan to evolve it over time to help smooth out all the hurdles noted in MPx post. 

 

I would be interested in getting your thoughts on the initial Markeplace concept? 

I can see the merit in what you're trying to propose but I can't see the Amazon concept scaling to things like housebuilding. 

 

I imagine what you're offering is a marketplace where vendors will advertise their designs, and then buyers will come along and choose one that seems to get good reviews, they can see pics, talk to people etc before taking the plunge. And your platform takes a cut for connecting buyers and sellers together.

 

The things to keep in mind are that self builds and the trades associated with them tend to be generally hyperlocal, the whole process is also intensely personalised. The people undertaking self builds are doing so because they don't like the identikit designs offered by volume developers, or they don't like the quality - so they're prepared to put up with the cost, hassle, time, effort, blood, sweat, tears and everything else that comes with the process. 

 

There is merit in making that process easier but a large part of that pain comes from the regulatory environment which you'd have no control over. The free market generally sorts out everything outside of that. 

[SteamyTea]

2 hours ago, Matt Perkins said:

think of it like Amazon for homes

Amazon have a 'best price' policy.  So that stops the traders selling bellow the Amazon price and also stops genuine bargains.

Online trading is not for small sellers any more.

[IanR]

On 25/08/2026 at 10:31, Matt Perkins said:

As such, I am thinking of developing a platform to digitise land and building into a fully immersive digital environment, allowing people to visualise and customise their dream home pre-development. I would then project manage all the necessary disciplines to deliver their dream home!

 

2 hours ago, Matt Perkins said:

For now though, my platform concept is simply an online marketplace/showroom for MMC builds - think of it like Amazon for homes. Users can select from a variety of customisable models, all of which have been user-reviewed and quality-assured, etc...

I would be interested in getting your thoughts on the initial Markeplace concept? 

 

I'd suggest a clear view on what it is you wish to do. Between your two posts there's not a lot of overlap on what you are thinking, other than the word "platform".

Is that the tech definition of "platform"? ie. a digital infrastructure that provides tools for other applications, services, or products to be built, run, and interact?

Perhaps I'm having a bad day, but I'm really not sure what you are wanting to do.