Two self-builds later... here's what I'd do differently

For the second one, obviously more expensive.

We were quite lucky.

My dad gifted us some money while we stayed in our house and waited for it to sell.

So we paid him back as soon as that went through and then got a mortgage for the rest.

It was a difficult mortgage.

I think, as I mentioned, we had to kind of go to you guys and you kind of rescued us from that.

I don't think there's anything we could have done differently.

It's just self-employed income.

it's sometimes tricky when lenders look at it but I think if you've got someone like you guys like Mark who have that experience to look beyond the black and white that's what's essential because if you know your lenders and I think we went with a lender that marked you well if you know the lenders you know what they're asking for you don't want to spend months down the line and then they pull the plug and that's what happened the first time around and it was you know very very difficult On the one we're about to do, we use development finance and that is a whole different ballgame.

Something I would advise against using, if you can, wherever possible.

And the short of it is, and then this applies to both, is make your cash available.

So if you're desperate to build a house and you know that you will be able to find some land, sell your house, go and rent somewhere and have the cash available.

And that will get rid of 90% of your funding problems.

So I will never, ever go with a development finance again.

Mortgage, I don't think is too bad.

Mortgage, as long as everything's watertight.

But my biggest lesson is don't do development finance.

There's a time and a place for it.

Sorry, don't do development finance on secured lending.

So for a self-build.

Development finance for commercial is probably a lot easier.

It's a whole different ballgame.

But for doing it for a self-build is not a good idea.

And I don't think a lot of lenders want to do it or even are able to do it.

And we managed to kind of find a backdoor um but again had we not had these problems with the garden and our house and how we you know again it comes back to that had we sorted that out we would have sold our house a lot quicker and then we would never have been in this situation so that is the biggest piece of advice i can give is if you're desperate to do it you think you're gonna be able to do it you can see a plot of land sell your house get the money rent if you have to live with family whatever it is but have the cash because that'll save you a lot of a lot of grief