The Benefits of Building your Own Home

Building your own house allows you to create your dream home rather than adapting your lifestyle to a house that was already built. In the UK, the most common procedure chosen to acquire a new residential property is purchasing an existing house. While this might work for some, most have a very difficult time finding a house in the right location, with the layout they need and for the price range they can afford.

Main benefits of building your own home:

  1. Choose your own location
  2. Freedom to fully customise your house design
  3. Opportunity to upgrade the house’s features
  4. Higher quality and reduced repairs
  5. It can save you money

Despite the benefits, building your own house can be intimidating. While buying a pre-existing property is as simple as finding what you like and buying; self-building is far more complicated and might not be for all. However, by choosing a prefab self-built, you can highly simplify the self-building process without losing any of the advantages.

What is a Self Build House?

Building your own home is the process of designing and building a house that satisfies your exclusive needs, rather than buying an already-constructed house. This is often referred to as self-building. In technical terms, self-building entails that you, yourself, are in charge of project managing the house construction.

However, since most self-builders have no experience managing a construction project, they generally choose a slightly different path known as custom-built. Building your own home as a custom built offers you the opportunity to fully personalise every detail of your house without the stress of having to control the whole building process.

What are the benefits of building your own house?

Building your own house offers nice benefits, regardless of the route chosen.

1. Choose your own location

Being able to build your dream space wherever you choose is a major benefit. When you buy an existing house, you are often forced to prioritise and make sacrifices. For example, you might find a house with a layout that fits your family perfectly but has to move to a different neighbourhood. When you build your own house, you can look for a plot of land that suits your location´s needs first to design your dream layout.

2. Freedom to fully customise your house design

Building your own house allows you to create the house of your dreams. You don’t need to look for a house layout that could adapt to your necessities, you just design the distribution that perfectly accommodates your lifestyle. You can make a list of all the rooms you want your home to offer, as well as all the characteristics you would love to enjoy. Hiring an architect or a designer can greatly help in this area since these professionals can help you turn your thoughts into floor plans to create a functional space.

3. Offers you the opportunity to upgrade the house’s features

Features such as energy efficiency have an incredible impact, not only on the environment but on the energy bills. If you choose to build your own house, you can definitely integrate those features you care about into every aspect of the project. You can place your home in a way that the sun contributes to the heating; design the house envelope to retain the heat and choose energy-efficient equipment as well as solar panels.

4. Higher quality and reduced repairs

When you are in control of what and how you build it, you can choose to design a house with almost no maintenance requirements. By choosing high-quality materials, smart designs and good workmanship, your house will last longer and need almost no fix-ups in the near future.

5. Self-building can save you money

Building your own home can definitely save you money, mainly because once the house is fully built the investment is made. Purchasing an existing home, however, may require you to spend more money. While an already-built house can be close to what you had in mind, it usually requires some adjustments to personalise it to your family’s needs. Additionally, you are likely to save in the long run, especially if you have opted for high-quality materials and energy efficiency.

What are the cons of building your own house?

While building your own home allows you to invest in a house designed just for you, it can have some inconveniences that shouldn’t be overlooked. However, all these disadvantages can be solved in a very simple way: choosing a prefab to build your own house.

Construction takes a long time, unless with prefab

The process of buying land, designing the house and building it with traditional on-site construction can take longer. In the UK, it takes an average of six months to build a traditional house [1]. This timeline, however, can be drastically shortened by choosing prefabrication methods since a high-quality prefab takes less than two months to be constructed [2].

youngman lovell bran house interior view
Image credit: Youngman Lovell – model Barn House

Project management isn’t for all

While it might seem that project managing your own house construction saves you money, it often becomes more expensive in the end because, with no building experience, mistakes are likely to happen. When you choose a prefab house, this inconvenience is enormously reduced. Since most of the construction works of a prefab take care of in a factory-like environment, the project management works are highly reduced.

Is a Prefab self-build right for me?

Choosing prefab construction to build your own home is definitely a smart idea that most will benefit from. Prefabrication falls into what we classify as custom-built, which highly simplifies the building process. Generally, a prefab self-built offers a solution to the biggest inconveniences of a self-built without sacrificing any of its benefits.

A prefab self-build is right for you if:

  • You have a specific location in mind: If you own land or want the freedom of choosing your location, a prefab self-build offers you the possibility of raising your dream house on the property of your choice.
  • You want to have control over your house’s customisation: By choosing a prefab you can choose how much you want to personalise your layout. You can build a fully-customised home from scratch, or simply modify some elements of a predesigned model.
  • Features such as energy efficiency or sustainability are important to you: There is an increasing number of prefab manufacturers who focus on these types of features. Additionally, since prefabs are built in a factory, there is exhaustive control over these features, which guarantees the success of the design.
  • High quality is a must for you: Being built off-site guarantees optimal quality on prefab homes. This is because all construction materials are stored in a protected environment, labour follows a highly mechanised process, and quality controls are thorough.
  • You want to save money: A prefab self-build can help you reduce the prices even more than a traditional one. Since most of the construction work of a prefab is highly mechanised and takes place in a centralised location, the cost of the average house price is highly reduced.
  • You want to move into your new house fast: Even if you have to build a fully-customised house from scratch, prefab construction will save a precious amount of time.
  • You don’t want to stress during this process: Prefab construction allows you to have control over the design and features offered by the house while releasing the pressure of having to control every step of the construction.

References:
[1]How long does it take to build a house Property Registry https://propertyregistry.co.uk/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-house/
[2]Youngman Lovel Spassio https://spassio.com/manufacturer/youngman-lovell/

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