How much would it realistically cost to build a house in the UK?

[Maria Yesina]

How much would it realistically cost to build a house in the UK?

[Paul Verder]

Please mind that the cost may vary from company to company. The best you can do is to hire some experts for that. I know one of the best renovation companies uk, Fittra, check the cost here https://www.fittra.co.uk/our-services/new-build/ We had great experience with Fittra from start to finish. Very flexible and responsive to all our requests for change during the design phase. Materials were shipped and delivered as promised. Everything absolutely top quality.

[olivia davis]

If you are thinking of London and the Home Counties and hiring a contractor, (and if you exclude the cost of the land) then work on about £200 a square foot and you won’t go too far wrong - as long as you work hard on sticking to budget.

In case you are wondering, it is no longer possible to have a contractor build you a house in the South-east for between £100 & £150 per square foot as you may have read elsewhere.

If you prefer to bring all the trades on yourself, with no contractor. You might be able to get the cost down to about £175.

If you would like to do a lot of the work yourself, reckon on spending about £125 - £165 per square foot on materials and specialist trades.

All these figures exclude VAT. Unless you hire a contractor you will be paying VAT upfront and reclaiming it later, but not every trade will charge you VAT- so add about 12% - 17% to the above figures for working out your cashflow through the job. You will get alot of the VAT back, but not until the build is finished and the HMRC have approved your reclaim.

Elsewhere in the UK costs will vary a lot. For example, if build costs were £200 /ft2 in Cornwall then, given the price of land and the market price of built-houses, it would be very hard for any house-builder to make money (in fact it is quite hard anyway!).