We recently carried out a survey amongst homeowners living in the UK to find out what was holding people back from building the house that they have always dreamed of.
Our results were really interesting. They showed that 54% of homeowners in the UK blame the lack of available funding as the key factor stopping them from building their dream home.
The survey also highlighted that nearly one in five homeowners blame the lack of available land in the right area as the main reason for not building their dream home while only 14% didn’t have the time needed to be able to make the commitment to the project.
The lending community are starting to wake up from the hibernation brought on by the recession and there are now more products and funding vehicles on the market which are available to self builders to allow them to get their projects underway.
But more still needs to be done to make access to funding easier for a much wider group of aspiring self-builders.
Private landowners are starting to realise the financial potential locked in their land and the availability of smaller plots has increased over the last 12 months paving the way for aspiring private house builders to construct their dream home.
There is no real immediate solution to solve the problem of lack of land and local councils are under significant pressure to find space for more homes to keep up with the demand while also protecting the Green Belt areas.
Our survey coincided with the government initiative looking into new ways to help generate housing as local governments come under increased pressure to supply more and more new homes.
There have also been calls in the last month for the public sector to start releasing land to make way for new developments and get the building boom under way again.
Government figures show that the number of new homes built in the year to March in England was 108,190, down 8% on the year before and 49% below their peak in 2007.
Private house builder’s account for a growing proportion of the homes built in Britain in recent months following the government's Funding for Lending scheme, which cut the cost of borrowing.
Building your own home is often a lifelong ambition and isn’t something that should be entered into lightly.
