Estate agents ‘best place to help growing self-build market’
The areas with the highest demand for self-build plots and properties are the South East, followed by Greater London and the East of England.
The cost-of-living crisis has yet to dampen people’s appetite for self-build with a third of home movers seeking to build their own homes.
Research from Suffolk Building Society also reveals that 10% have been put off self-build by the difficulties of finding land and over two-thirds (69%) do not know that some mortgage lenders will allow them to borrow to purchase land where planning permission has been granted.
BENEFIT
The building society reckons estate agents could benefit by discussing self-build options with their clients. Its research also found that 31% of those considering self-build would prefer to go for a greenfield, a similar proportion said they would consider a brownfield project and 21% said they would undertake a major renovation to an existing property.
The Society also found that more than a third (36%) of potential self-builders plan to turn to estate agents and land agents to help them secure that perfect plot of land. The next two most popular methods to search for land were via their own research, such as visiting planning departments and using Google Maps etc. (29%) and land and property auctions (28%).
HIGHEST DEMAND
The areas most likely to see the highest demand for self-build plots and properties are the South East (20%), followed by Greater London (17%) and the East of England (12%).
Richard Norrington, Chief Executive at Suffolk Building Society, says: “Self-build is considered a fairly standard route to homeownership in countries such as Hungary, France, and Sweden, and with better education and awareness from lenders, and the property industry as a whole, self-build could become more mainstream here in the UK too.”
Norrington adds: “As a country, we need to normalise self-build, encouraging regular people to build good homes, thus helping to reduce the housing shortage in the process and improving the collective carbon footprint of our housing stock.
“We would like more people to know that some lenders are ready and willing to lend on land as well as for the build itself, and secondly, that self-build is more accessible than they might have previously thought.”
Um, it’s all very well talking about demand, but what about supply? There’s an education process needed too for
1) local authorities, to really, honestly, value self-build planning applications and small infill applications by developers. All too often these applications are actively discouraged by LPAs, for example by having Strategic Plans that place all the emphasis on strategic development locations (i.e. big estates which come with lots of free social housing and infrastructure levies) and restrict small applications to, say, 1000 units over a 15 year period across entire boroughs. No thought is given to supporting the local network of small builders and their suppliers, or to encouraging a diversity of designs, approaches and delivery timescales by reserving part of SDLs for smaller applicants.
2) developers and developer-builders. Having gone through the tortuous agony and expense of securing planning, only a proportion of small developers will consider selling their sites on to, say, self-builders or self-build community groups. They’d rather take the margin that’s available from building out the site for themselves. Of course there are some light-touch developers who just pile up planning permissions, sell up and move on, but even they usually sell to other builders, not have-a-go “civilians”.
To create a viable market of oven-ready plots for self-builders, there’s a whole load of work needed on the supply side too, otherwise it will always remain a cottage industry (ha ha).