How to encourage self-builders to build better homes?

Allan was invited as a guest on the Custom Build Homes podcast to discuss how COVID-19 has affected the Custom Build housing sector and identify the opportunities to improve people’s homes following the crisis.

Tom Connor, Hester McQueen (Custom Build Homes), Jason Orme (Homebuilding & Renovating) and Allan discussed many interesting topics that will help self-builders to build houses that support their lifestyles. We picked several interesting questions and presented them on our blog.

The following questions will be answered in upcoming blogs, published in the next few days:

• How to encourage self-builders to build the best homes for themselves?
• What are the benefits to a family of working with an architect when designing their home?
• How does the Custom Build experience in Australia and the USA differ from the UK?
• How important is thermal performance for self-builders?

You can watch the video and read the transcript below.

HOW TO ENCOURAGE SELF-BUILDERS TO BUILD THE BEST HOMES FOR THEMSELVES?

Allan and Jason agreed that one of the most important advantages of building a bespoke Self Build home is the freedom of building a home that will suit your individual lifestyle. They highlighted the importance of futureproofing the house by asking the questions: how do you live now? how you are going to live in 5 years? and how are you going to live in 10 years? Using the Custom Build approach allows people to personalise their future home in a way that it will suit their changing lifestyle throughout the course of their life. In the video below you can hear Jason’s thoughts:

TRANSCRIPT:

Jason: ‘I think what this process will do is just give people a significant amount of extra impetus to take on control of their homes so that their home life works for them.  

But also, begin to think very carefully about the way that our lifestyles have changed as well. So, we’re gonna get more working at home. We’re gonna get more time at home. So you better make it good and enjoy it and take control. 

So the processes that I went through when I was designing the last one (house) were future-proofing, thinking about performance, the thing that everybody talks about is actually the thing that is under the most pressure in most people’s houses – broadband capacity. 

When you’ve got a kid, two kids with Disney +  and me trying to do Zoom meetings and so on, then, the actual performance of the house itself in terms of those things is really beginning to be pushed. So there’s just a hell of a lot of things to think about when you design and work on a house. And as Allan will know, I’ve shared at the Homebuilding & Renovating shows, good and bad experiences I’ve had with designers over the years. 

But actually, what it teaches you is the good design. And a good design experience is just critical to it because, the consumers, your customers and the likes of me and the people that we write content for on the home building site, they are people who are doing this for the first time. 

They won’t know what they are doing and probably won’t do it again. They’re gonna be spending probably tens if not hundreds of thousands of pounds, they really should use the experts’ help. And people like Allan, who are good designers are absolutely essential to making that kind of lifestyle conversation work, really. Because most people don’t know how to start it.’