Reasons Not To Selfbuild
Financially, whether it is a good bet, depends on a number of factors. Builders are not all making vast profits otherwise they would all have retired long ago. There are a lot of tricky aspects to handle when building a house and you need to have some particular skills or connections to make it worthwhile. To put it humorously - would you attempt a major brain operation on someone if you had no experience or skills in surgery just because you thought you could make money out of it or because it was a great challenge? Well, maybe don’t answer that! Anyway, you get the point.
Questions to ask yourself
- Are you a good organizer of other people, particularly in the building trade?
- Have you a range of building skills which you can use on your house (but if so it might pay better to work in your own occupation and simply buy a house)? Alternately you may have a range of personal connections in the building trade who can help you.
- Have you a special kind of access to cheap building materials? Maybe you know someone in the supply trade or you own a quarry or a wood or some other building trade supplier and you can get materials cheaply?
- Have you a particularly creative eye and can build something more beautiful than is generally available on the open market? This may be new build or by refurbishing an existing building.
- Have you spare time on your hands which can be most profitably used to build a house?
Consider the five points above and if they don’t particularly apply to you then be warned that you might lose money doing self build rather than profiting from it.
The Stress Factor
The other main reason not to do self build can be described as the stress factor. Any or all of the following problems may beset you -
- Finance and cash flow problems, especially if costs rise unexpectedly or interest rates change for the worse. It’s not uncommon for self builders to get to the stage of almost completing the project and to be relying on selling the property they are moving out of, only to find that there is a lull in the house sales market and they cannot realize the amount they were relying on getting. This can be a very difficult situation
- If you go into temporary accommodation such as a caravan or you rent somewhere while building a house, this in itself can be stressful
- Many self builders are in some other form of employment whilst building and this can be tiring over the long run
- The uncertainty of working in an area that you are not experienced in and learning new techniques over a short period can create a very steep learning curve and produce huge stress
Mark Brinkley, in his book The Housebuilder’s Bible there is an excellent section on the pros and cons of self building.
