Introduction
My name is David and I have been a property developer for over 25 years now. I have spent my career focusing on smaller infill developments throughout the south east and after a career of building houses I thought it was about time I self build my dream home.
So why am I going to Self Build my dream house? The truth is that Self building your own home can be very profitable granted you buy the land correctly. This coupled with the fact you will have a brand new home that is built for your needs and preferences its a complete no brainer.
All of this sounds really romantic, however if you are not careful, you could fall into some pitfalls along the way.
What is this series?
To help everyone buying a self build plot I’m going to share the hard won building experience with articles, information and a blow by blow account for my house I’m currently building in Hampshire, uk to help you avoid the mistakes I’ve made ( and paid for ) in the past.
How I got my start in property
The first property I bought in 1996 was a former farm that had been compulsorily purchased by The Department of Transport to construct a new section of the A3. It was an odd collection of a small farmhouse with 3 outbuildings. I refurbished and extended the farmhouse, then split it into 2 separate residential units and sold one and lived in the other half.
I then converted the old agricultural buildings into residential units which are still retained and still provide rental income some 25 years later.
This provided the capital to buy a house in Headley which had been a school. It was a semi-detached property with a large garden to the side. As the house was in the settlement boundary, I got planning permission to build another large detached house in the garden and sold it to a developer local.
This then lead to me impulsively purchasing a huge detached cinema in Portsmouth at auction for little more than the bricks would have cost without properly researching the flood risks. This became a serious problem, then the tenant stole the projection equipment and disappeared. Eventually I sold it for 65 affordable housing units and was very lucky to get out and double my money.
This incredibly lucky run gave me the confidence to start my own property development company and have since built over 35 homes and apartments in and around the southeast. Needless to say this wasn’t without its issues.
A career ending mistake?
Cashflow is king and I learnt that lesson the hard way in 2008. I was 95% of the way through an 12 unit development in Farnham, Surrey when the mortgage crisis broke and banks suddenly wanted their money back. Obviously I had no way of repaying them and refinancing was impossible. The bank were seizing property business’s to fill their own pockets later and many excellent local developers were driven out of business, losing millions of pounds to the banks greed.
Then a blessing disguised as a disaster. A high pressure water pipe connection failed on the top floor over the weekend and when I came to work on Monday morning, 4 flats were destroyed, ceilings on the floor, water up to the skirting boards. I was on the knife edge of bankruptcy and losing everything.
After the bank came to inspect the damage, they backed off demanding immediate repayment, fearful that the cost of repairing the flats would exceed the loan.
The bank decided it was potentially a liability they didn’t want and it was better to keep me on the hook instead, which bought me a tiny window of time. I shut the doors and curtains of the ruined flats and had a fire sale of the remaining units, reducing prices by 30% to repay the bank part of the debt.
I sold 2 flats to an investor at a huge discount to repay the bank and in return he gave me a loan to fix up the other 2 flats, as the insurance had refused to pay out. This was the life line I needed and I quickly repaired the last 2 flats and sold them.
Had the development not flooded, I would have lost everything !
Conclusion
So I’m older, greyer, still covered in mud on site but a little wiser and happy to pass my experience on and share solutions to the problems you will inevitably come across.
Self-building is less terrifying, the risks are lower and banks are kinder to those building their own home, aware of potential adverse publicity.
The rewards of self-build are potentially enormous, emotionally and financially and I look forward to sharing my journey with you all.
