Mayflower Mortgage: Hello and welcome back to Self Builders Podcast brought to you by Mayflower Mortgage and Finance, ⁓ the podcast for anyone planning, funding, or building on their own home. ⁓ this episode ⁓ we've got Andy joining us who has been on a podcast before. So he's a returning guest and is starting another project and has been doing a few projects in between as well. So someone who's done it, learn from it, and hopefully can give some sort of insights into what went right, what went wrong, and give some real sort of ⁓ nuggets of gold that everyone else can sort of use on their journey. So Andy, welcome. Thank you for coming on again. And if it's all right with you, go sort of back to the beginning and if you can introduce yourself again and tell the listeners little bit where your self build sort of journey, I suppose, started, if that's okay.

Andy: Sounds good. So yeah, my wife and I ⁓ her parents built houses a long time ago and then one day maybe well it's I think it's a good thing. ⁓ you know, we decided to jump on the journey and I think it was twenty seventeen now we started our first house, so we found a plot of land. It's a pretty tricky piece, ⁓ not not an easy one to work with and it was quite cheap, it was about 130,000 and that was in the south east, so ⁓ really quite fortunate I think. So we did our first build Did it in around a hundred and twenty thousand as well, so I think just under a thousand pounds the square meter. So ⁓

Mayflower Mortgage: really, really good value, especially especially nowadays.

Andy: Yeah, yeah. So really ⁓ great value. and yeah, we we did a lot of it ourselves, I think. We we learnt all the trades and ⁓ really had ⁓ you know, a good good good experience with that. Managed to do it all, managed to finish. Didn't really have any major issues, I think. I mean we've been on chalk, so it made things a lot easier. We didn't have any issues with the foundations. ⁓ but took a long time, took a lot of effort, I think it took a lot out of us, but we learn a lot, so we learn how to do a lot of what is required and because of that it allowed us to keep, you know, trades on board and accountable for the builds that we you know, th th that the latest build that we did. And throughout that process. So, you know, we we had situations where, you know, brookies would be taking out, you know, the floor vents and saying that, you know, you don't need those in there, but we knew from building control that you did. So it gave us kind of You know, we we understood the fabric of the building a bit more and really it h allowed us to kind of keep our trades a bit more accountable. So we we subbed everything out and that was ⁓ the approach that we took. So we project managed everything, got our hands quite quite dirty on that first one and then ⁓ subbed it all out. And essentially found a team that we ⁓ mostly found a team we got on really well with ⁓ that we used for the next one as well.

Mayflower Mortgage: Okay, so what was the original motivation for that first one? Was it was that ⁓ just for you two guys to live in or was it do you think at that point it was gonna be a a bit more of a an obsession or a or a one after the other?

Andy: So then we go ahead. Yeah, I mean definitely was a way to get on the housing ladder. We were looking at houses and we were like for for the money that we could get in the area that we wanted to go we just didn't see much. ⁓ and I think we you know, seeing knowing our in laws could do it and had done it and had the skills and then my father in law was a civil engineer as well, so on top of building the houses he had that kind of deep experience. We just decided to go for it. I guess we were a bit younger, we didn't have kids, so we had a bit a little bit less to lose. So we just decided to go for it. ⁓ my dad is a chartered building surveyor and he was not super enthusiastic about it. He had seen a lot of people go he'd seen a lot of people go down that route unsuccessfully. so he didn't he wasn't telling us not to do it, but he he wasn't super positive. I think I remember it was when the timber frame was up and the roof was on, we were standing on top of the scaffolding, and that was the first time I remember him being calm about it. He was like, Okay, you know it's going well, so well you know, good choice. But for those f for that first the year of

Mayflower Mortgage: Little little bit of caution's not a bad thing.

Andy: Yeah, yeah. And then and now, you know, he's he's he's super encouraging, but I think the bigger the houses get and if you want to do more than one house, the more complicated the funding gets and the planning gets. So it doesn't necessarily get easier. It's just different challenges.

Mayflower Mortgage: Okay, so what what's what's where's the the journey gone? So you've done the the first one completed and then where have you moved to what have we moved on to now?

Andy: Yeah, so we moved down the road to a place called Seven Oaks, just in Kent. we were quite lucky to get a place there. It's a it's a really nice area. I think we were quite fortunate. It was someone's garden and you know, we were kind of first in there and we moved pretty quickly. ⁓ difficult to get the funding on that one. We we we did a self build mortgage ⁓ with Build Store, ⁓ and then that didn't work, which is why we came to you guys. And then ⁓ we had a very, very short period of time ⁓ to get it over the line and had to kind of bluff it with the seller that it was with the underwriting stuff even though we'd completely lost the mortgage. So that was very, very stressful. so we were kind of being a little bit circumspect with the truth I think, but we we managed to get I I mean it was amazing. It was I think we managed to I think it was Mark ⁓ from your team and we managed to get it through in like six weeks the mortgage. It was c crazy. I mean we every day we were working hard on it. Which is pretty insane, yeah.

Mayflower Mortgage: Yeah, which for self build is is good.

Andy: So we managed to get that one and then it's ⁓ you know, it was a much bigger house. It was a different challenge, you know. We I think w you w my wife and I, Charlotte, when we look back, we always think we kind of skipped to build. We went from a you know, a hundred square metre house to what was two hundred and fifty ish, but it's a bit b i that's your kind of measured floor space, but it is three floors. Each floor is technically a hundred square metres. The loft is you lose a little bit because of the eaves and stuff, but it was a big jump, I think, and At the start of that build I had a slip disk in my back, so I couldn't do any of the groundworks. So I'm very much hands on and I was having to take a back seat while my father in law and my wife were l literally so it was hard and I I literally couldn't move really, so I really didn't have a choice. but it was a great opportunity. I mean it's an amazing house. It's it's on the market in the next week or so 'cause we have to to fund the next build that we're gonna do. ⁓ and we you know, we said we were gonna stay in this one, the ⁓ it's an amazing location, but

Mayflower Mortgage: Infuriate yeah.

Andy: you know, when an opportunity comes along it's very difficult to to say to say no. I think we're not we were very excited about the second one. The third one we are excited but it's not like we're leaving something which is, you know, not not an amazing property. So ⁓ yeah, different experience going into the third one I think.

Mayflower Mortgage: Different yeah, you sort of along. So it goes back to the second one you built then, the larger the larger house. So same went down the same route, so sort of self managed, subcontracted the works, or did you do anything slightly different or what was the what was the setup with you?

Andy: Yeah, so it was It was pretty much the same approach. I think we were less hands on. We didn't have the time. ⁓ there was a period where I was working in London, Charlotte was pregnant and the build was going on. I mean there were days where she was pregnant climbing up ladders and even the trades like, you need to not do that. But I was so busy that I you know, I I wasn't even around to see it. But ⁓ it went well. We just did less. You know, the plaster boarding for example, it was just impossible for us to do that. We did it on the first one, ⁓ and we had this guy that you know, was half my size and could carry about three plasterboards on his back in one go was literally insane. But so I think we we we didn't make as much money possibly and then going into the third floor and creating a hot roof was quite expensive as well. It was worth it, but it was quite expensive, obviously insulation and extra you know, whole extra floor that you didn't necessarily budget for. So I would say we probably didn't make as much money on that one, even though it was probably more stressful, a lot bigger. ⁓ yeah and a few other lessons learned which I'm sure you'll come onto in a minute about things that would probably benefit people as well.

Mayflower Mortgage: sort of gonna sort of sh yeah you've nicked the you've nicked the sli slide into the next sort of question there. So yeah, what have what did you learn? What did you learn from the first one? What what sort of mistakes did you make when the first one that you've corrected or what things did you do slightly differently?

Andy: Yeah, but I think our first one was a smaller house, right? And it went for ⁓ just over half a million and those houses sell a lot quicker. This house is bigger, it's over a million. And when I think the ad the advice is buy with the aim of selling, even if you don't plan to sell, because you can create the best house in the world, but if there is a couple of things that will hold you back, it's a lot harder to rectify this later down the line. So for example, we have this big house. I think we have a good sized garden, it's bigger than our last one, but actually is disproportionately small because the neighbour who sold us the land kept essentially half of the garden that they would have given us. and we you know, it's been on the market before and a lot of feedback coming of, you know, we want a bigger garden. Again, the garden itself is not necessarily small, just disproportionately small. And that was the feedback that was coming from people viewing the house. So we had to go back to the seller and essentially pay them some money and make some compromises to get the garden. ⁓ and we've got the garden. But it was a lot harder to do that.

Mayflower Mortgage: Parts of yeah.

Andy: And I think we should have just negotiated a bit harder at the start and said Yeah, and I think we knew that at the start as well. So I think really you've gotta I think with the end in mind, ⁓ and it's easy when you're in the middle of the financing and the contract and you love the place and it's your dream house and you're desperate to get it. It's easy to overlook things or make compromises. But I think you have to be really strict and say if this is gonna affect the resale value or how easy it is to build or what we can build. think you've just gotta be really careful 'cause at at the end of the day I think it will come and bite you at the end of the day.

Mayflower Mortgage: Yeah, it's it's difficult to sort of the balance between head and heart, especially with a when it's sort of you're aiming to to live in it in the end. But I think it's a good it's a good tip that that one of the reasons people do self build, whether that's your main aim or not, is that it can be cheaper and it can give you more equity than buying off the shelf or from a, you know, a large national sort of developer on the new on the new build side. So it has to come into it somewhere, I think, is ⁓ It's a good idea. And then the build itself, you you sort of touched on a little in terms of doing a little bit less yourself this time, maybe through necessity with the bad pack pregnancy and and work. But is there anything in the build itself that you did that you sort of learnt?

Andy: ⁓ I mean Building control, I think a bigger house, much more we learnt about building control, you know, fire escapes coming from the loft, you know, having having that fire escape, ⁓ your fire doors, which we never was never an issue in the first house because we didn't have those floors. ⁓ so that created a lot of grief I think for us, which could easily have been avoided. So really upskilling on on the building regs was was a good lesson. And then Pumps. You know, everyone's gotta have a heat pump more or less these days and getting your heat pump working and getting someone that knows how to install it is an absolute deal breaker. We had an amazing plumber and a firm that were quite well regarded, but they had very little experience I think in installing the particular type of heat pump that was put in. ⁓ and it took pretty much a year of tweaking and different people and it turned out that another company that came in had to actually go to the manufacturer and get one of their team to come in and it was all electrics. It was all coding and programming. It was nothing to do with the actual installation. So what I would suggest is you know, heat pumps are a great thing. I think, you know, we're gonna have to put them in soon. So the choice as to whether or not you put them in will probably be taken out of your hands. But it's definitely worth the time, the investment and getting a great firm to put in your heat pump because when it's minus five outside in winter and your hot water's not working, that's when it becomes a a bit of a problem and You don't you don't wanna make that mistake. It's just not it's just not fun.

Mayflower Mortgage: Yeah, we we we heard that quite a bit in terms of the y you need to get a specialist or someone who is on board. One in terms of the expertise and the ethos for the heat source pumps and we had solar crest on and for their ventilation side of things as well and they they sort of mirrored the same image and if you ever get a builder or installer who's trying to start us by trying to talk you out of doing what you're gonna do, it's ⁓ cut the conversation qu short quite quickly and move to someone who's who's specialised in in that area. for sort of big budgeting costing and stuff with the second build, money side of it, was obviously touch on because of sort of who we are. The financing side, larger build, probably a little bit more complex in that sense. How did you find the journey sort of from the the initial one to the second one? Anything learnt there? Anything sort of that that came out of the woodwork that you was unexpected, or was it more just speed and and sort of time and pushing it pushing it through?

Andy: Yeah, we had to for the second one, obviously more expensive. We were quite lucky. My dad let us, you know, gift gifted us some money while our house 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. is sometimes tricky when lenders look at it, but I think

Mayflower Mortgage: Mm-hmm.

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

Mayflower Mortgage: No, and that's where Yeah.

Andy: Something something I would advise against using if you can wherever possible. and the and the short of it is and and this applies to both is make your cash available. So if you have to rent f 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 ninety percent 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, you know, 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 different, 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 or even are able to do it, and we managed to kind of find a backdoor.

Mayflower Mortgage: Does it yeah.

Andy: 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 'cause that'll save you a lot of a lot of grief.

Mayflower Mortgage: Yeah, from our side, having having the cash available helps a number of number of sort of different ways, especially with cash flow, gives the lenders a little bit more confidence. But yeah, we'll always try and do a a self build mortgage where where possible rather than reverting to the regulated development side of things where there's a few more hoops and ⁓ can be a little bit more more expensive overall as well, which again, in terms of eating into the one of the reasons for doing the self build and development finance in the first place, it it can.

Andy: Course.

Mayflower Mortgage: eat into sort of the the profit that you get the other side. But touching on the sort of the mark side of things, yeah, you know, using someone with expertise, someone with experience and a relationship with the lender as well. You know, we don't work with sort of lenders that don't understand the market, they don't understand self bills, all the lenders that we have available to us know what what we're asking of them and you know, we'll present it in a way that that hopefully goes through smoothly and gets the the funding in the end. So moving on to this next project then, give us a little bit of description about the development. I say development in this sort of loser terms, regulated development, but what what's the plan on this one?

Andy: Yeah, so this one's trickier. So it was development finance obviously super super difficult, loads of charges on different properties. It's just ⁓ a a a bigger beast. So we haven't started it yet. ⁓ once the house sells we should be able to get a mortgage, then we'll be able to start it. the plan was to build two houses. We used a solicitor, I don't think that was experienced enough who didn't realise there was a covenant in in the transfer or the T P one that will ⁓ the moment is limiting us from building the second house. ⁓ the challenge here is that it's not that she missed it, she just interpreted the covenant incorrectly and if you went and spoke spoke to the solicit they would still say, No, you're absolutely fine. But if you take it to some other people that they've pretty much confirmed that you can only build one house. ⁓ so that was another piece of advice is when you move beyond a small self build, or even a small self build, you will pay for what you get when it comes to your legal team and you need someone that is thorough Thorough but helpful. There are solicitors that are thorough and negative and you know, even your own solicitor can be quite negative and like this is not working, you know, they're being difficult. What you really need is a solicitor that's thorough but also wants to work with you to help it get over the line, be positive. And if you have to pay for that, you have to pay for on board with the project, you know.

Mayflower Mortgage: on board with the project.

Andy: The solicitor we used when Development Finance came in, she they have asked for so much, I've never seen all of this, it's gonna take me all day. And it's like, that's not what you want to hear. That's not what you want to hear from your solicitor. You wanna hear you wanna hear confidence, you wanna say, look, I'll get this sorted, don't worry, it's priority for me. and that the solicitor was by and large the the biggest issue we had. Not not just ours, but the the lenders as well. By and large, the biggest problem we had with the with with the build. We actually got to a point where we had to use a specialist broker for it, we actually got to the point where

Mayflower Mortgage: No, that's not even here now.

Andy: The underwriter declined the finance after about three months, so they did hadn't even given us an offer, which was quite rare. So they hadn't even given us an offer, spent three months of providing everything under the sun. You know, we paid for valuations, so we'd we'd shipped out thousands. ⁓ but then the CEO of the specialist firm we used ended up going to ⁓ the board of the lender and the lender actually approved it. So they they over ⁓ overrode the underwriter, which is quite rare I think, ⁓ and approved it.

Mayflower Mortgage: Yes, just a bit.

Andy: So it was it was a crazy, crazy situation. But again a lot of that being would have been avoided if you'd had cash and then could do a mortgage, like with you guys, it's so much so much more straightforward. and again we but we didn't know that. You know, it's only the second it's only the third time we've done it and it's the first time we used development finance, but you know, we've we've learned from it.

Mayflower Mortgage: Yeah, I know you what's what what are you building then? What is it? Is it how many bedrooms? What you've been building out of? What's the what's the plan?

Andy: Yeah, so it'll be quite similar to the second one. I think we've been a little bit more ⁓ choosy with the layout and some things that we've learned. It's a much bigger garden, which is part of the reason that we moved there and the location's slightly different. ⁓ but hopefully we can build the second one. We've got a bit of a plan. ⁓ we need the seller's approval to take off the Covenant and you know, he's got his money now, so it's a little bit difficult to get him to the table. And we've already got a buyer for the land. We've already had a pre up saying they'll allow us to build two houses 'cause it's only got planning for one. So there's a lot of things going for it, but there's still other things to fall into place, all which could have been avoidable. But ⁓ it'll be a nice house. I think ⁓ I'm trying to think what will be different for this one. I think we I think it will just look a bit more put together on the outside. I think it will have hopefully some nice features. you know, the c the the columns around you know, around the the the doorway with ⁓ with your kind of overhang, just a bit more a b a bit more what it will be worth when it resells. What we don't want to do is build a the same house, you know, style that we built for our first one when this is a house that could be worth one point five million. So I think it's we we've got an architect as well, that's one thing. We we haven't used an architect for the first two, even though my wife's brother is an architect. ⁓ sometimes having family involved is not always the most straightforward thing. But we actually got an architect for this one. We interviewed architects. I think we interviewed like ten and we found someone we really, really like and she's just great. I mean she we did kind of a brief and our brief is a bit random. It's not like, ⁓ come up with anything you want. It's like, no, we have to have this, we have to have this, we have to have this. And she came up with these set of plans and we looked at them and I was a bit like, ⁓ this is weird and then I sat down and I spent About five, ten minutes looking at it in more detail and I was like she's really I was like, she's really understood what we've asked here. I said she's really gone away and spent a lot of time thinking about what could I create here. And it was a really great experience using her. I mean it's just taken th that you know, we we we did a lot of the plans ourselves and or had, you know, we did use my wife's brother in law but it was just difficult, you know, it was trying to find time and people doing it on top of their jobs and you know, you would get halfway into the build and make a tweak, but then they could you you People were busy and then so you could you had different sets of plans that different people were working off. To have one person that's managing the plans that makes the changes that we need it's just is just so much less stressful. And it and it's one of the things my dad said seven years ago we should have done and we said no, because we didn't have the money, ⁓ and we were learning. But you know, seven or eight years later, here we are and you know, I think if you can find an architect that you work with, even though in theory we could do what she's doing, it would just take a long, long time. know, you can go out and you can do building rigs yourself. There are I think there are applications that give you templates for all of the different floor slab compositions you could use and then you can just check the right one and put your details in. So you can do it yourself, but actually the responsibility to do that and the effort is I think when you're doing bigger projects, it's just not worth it.

Mayflower Mortgage: goes back to I mean we we put out that recommendation as well as it look use use the professionals that know what they're doing, especially on the more complex and and sort of larger larger projects. your dad on board with this one? Is he

Andy: Yeah, Dad was ⁓ dad Dad was contributing to the financing of this one and it was quite stressful. So ⁓ he's on board but I think he was surprised at that how difficult development finance was. He had to jump through a few hoops to help us with it. So ⁓ the building itself he's on board with. The route to get there. Yeah, the root the route to get there. But this time we'll give him a nice holiday, so we'll we'll I think we didn't have money we didn't really have money on the first ones to say thank you that much, but this one will we'll definitely give him a nice ⁓ nice holiday.

Mayflower Mortgage: Yeah, that he dragged him into it. And you're gonna stay in this one or are you gonna buy go again?

Andy: Yeah, I think so. I mean it's in the right location, it's a great garden. I I I don't see any reason we'd move. We've got another plot of land not far from there that we've got an option agreement pending on. So that one is ⁓ where if we get planning we can potentially build two or three houses. But I think we're looking at ⁓ it's and this is another option in the industry, is you something called back to back transactions whereby you buy it, get the planning and then just resell it straight away without actually taking any money. So we're looking at that. We we think ⁓ it might just be an easier way to ⁓ make some money without all of the stress. So we're not sure but we we we've got it in our back Yeah, yeah. We're gonna live in this one, but the other one again it's a great location. We used ⁓ we used a company who can actually find land quite easily. not c not quite easily, but they can find land and they ⁓ they were super helpful. So they helped us find this one.

Mayflower Mortgage: Just live in this one. Just

Andy: And ⁓ yeah, it was a bit wild.

Mayflower Mortgage: Amazing. Well, yeah, thank you so much for for sort of coming on and just sharing sort of where you're up to and what you're doing. And yeah, we're always here. If you need anything in terms of self build or development or anything like that, then let us know. But if you leave us on sort of the one thing, that one thing that you've learned, whether it's from planning, building, funding, what would be the one thing that you'd you'd tell everyone is the the golden golden bit of advice?

Andy: Get a good team, you pay for what you get. ⁓ and then in some situ you know, we've got amazing roofer, cheap, high quality, difficult to get a hold of him. You know, there's trade offs, but you pay for what you get is the short of it. If you want a lot if you want a solicitor that will not lead you astray, you're gonna have to pay for it. So that is the short of it. If you want to build a nice house, have good people, cost money. If you want to do a lot of it yourself, you can do that as well. But that is the short of it.

Mayflower Mortgage: Get what you pay for.

Andy: You get what you pay for, is the reality. Yeah.

Mayflower Mortgage: I made it, Andy. Well, thank you so much for for coming back on and and sharing where you're up to.

Andy: Yeah, no problem. Thank you so much for having me.