Self & Custom Build

Self & Custom Build homes offer the opportunity to create your dream home.

And at Build Consultants, we've been helping people realise these dreams for many years.

Our highly interdisciplinary approach means we can support you from concept to completion on either style of journey, providing expert support in helping you to identify the right plot, at the right price, to craft your design, obtain planning permission, and to plan and carry out your build.

Plot Searching

The first hurdle in any Self or Custom Build journey is to find the right plot - and at the right price. Our extensive experience with a wide variety of sites and planning applications means we're able to identify unique, 'outside the box' sites that might on first glance appear unsuitable or difficult to work with - and turn them into plots for your dream home.
If we're able to identify a number of would-be Self or Custom Builders searching in the same area, we're also able to bring people together to look at larger plots of land that would normally be out of reach for an individual household.

Contract & Acquisition

Once your plot has been identified, it's really important that the legal process is properly configured to ensure you're protected throughout the process. We can negotiate with landowners on your behalf, developing acquisition models and documentation that reduces your liability in the event that something goes wrong - for example, if planning permission is denied, or if extensive and expensive remediation works to eliminate ground contamination turn out to be required.

Planning Permission

Once the acquisition process has been agreed and is underway, designing and obtaining planning permission for your dream home is the next big step we can support you with. We're not architects, but our technicians can work with you to get your dream on paper, producing plans and CGIs to support the planning application - or, we can work with an architect of your choosing, or recommend one of our usual partners, to produce and integrate your design into a planning application, providing proactive advice on how your proposed design relates to the planning context and challenges. We can handle production of ancillary and supporting documentation, including Planning and Design & Access Statements, coordination of specialist professions such as ecologists and arborists, and the submission and administration of the planning application on your behalf. 

Finance & Viability

From day 1, it's critical that your Self or Custom Build project is thoroughly planned to ensure that it fits within your budget - whether you're a cash buyer or looking to use mortgage finance to make your dream a reality. We can work with you to produce financial models assessing the costs of your project against its projected final value, setting out cashflow considerations and supporting you in providing details to any finance providers you might be working with.

Project Management

Not everyone is an expert in Building Regulations, building technologies, or the general ins-and-outs of building a home - so we're available to support you in commissioning and managing your construction team, from the day you get planning to the day you move in. We can assist with contractual arrangements, Building Control, discharging planning conditions, monitoring expenditure and the build itself, and much more - helping to smooth out the build process and ensure a finished project that's compliant with the rules as well as within budget.