Ten checks before you offer on a plot

Almost every expensive self-build problem I have seen was visible, in some form, before the land was bought. Not obvious — visible. The information was public, or cheap, or a phone call away, and nobody went looking for it because the plot looked fine and the vendor was talking to someone else too.

You will never eliminate the risk. A plot is not a product, and some of what matters is genuinely unknowable until you dig. But the difference between a good buy and a bad one is usually not luck — it is whether the price you paid reflected the problems you were buying. Here is what to run down first.

1. Who owns it, and what exactly are they selling

Order the title from HM Land Registry. It costs a few pounds. Compare the title plan against the red line on the sales particulars — they are not always the same shape, and the difference is usually the bit you assumed came with it. Check for a ransom strip between the plot and the road: a metre of someone else's land across your only access is the most expensive metre in construction.

2. Access — legal and physical, which are different problems

Legal access means a right of way that actually permits construction traffic and a new dwelling, not a footpath right from 1938. Physical access means you can build a compliant vehicular access: adequate width, kerb radii, and visibility splays in both directions. On a fast rural lane the required splay can be 43m or more in each direction, and it must be over land you control or over highway. If it crosses a neighbour's hedge, you need their agreement, and they know it.

3. Services — the distance is the cost

Water, electricity, and foul drainage. For each, find out where the nearest connection point is and who owns the land in between. A connection 30m away across your own field is a modest cost. The same connection 300m away, under an adopted road, needing a Section 50 street works licence and a traffic management plan, is a different number entirely — and it is a number the utility will quote you, for free, if you ask.

If there is no mains foul sewer, you are into a package treatment plant or septic tank, which needs a discharge point or a drainage field, which needs percolation testing, which needs ground that actually percolates. That chain has several links that can fail.

4. Planning history — read the refusals

Search the local authority planning portal for the site and its neighbours. An existing consent is reassuring, but a refusal is more informative: it tells you what the authority objects to, in their own words, and whether it is something a better scheme fixes or something intrinsic to the site. Two refusals on the same grounds is a pattern, not bad luck.

5. Designations

Conservation area, listed building (on the site or adjoining), Article 4 direction, Green Belt, National Landscape or National Park, scheduled monument, tree preservation orders, ancient woodland. Most of this is on the national planning data service and is free to check. Green Belt in particular is close to a hard stop for a new dwelling — there are exceptions, but they are narrow and you should know before you offer, not after.

6. Flood risk — the formal zone, not the weather

Check the flood zone, and check surface water separately. Zone 3 does not rule out development, but it means a Flood Risk Assessment, probably raised floor levels, possibly resilient construction, and a conversation with your insurer and your lender that is better had early.

7. Ground conditions

Made ground, historic landfill, coal mining, radon, and shrinkable clay near trees. A basic desk study plus a modest site investigation is a four-figure sum. Discovering soft ground at foundation level, with a contractor stood on site waiting, is a five-figure sum and a programme delay. This is the single best value survey in self-build and the one most often skipped.

8. Levels

A sloping site is not a feature, it is a cost. Cut and fill, retaining structures, longer drainage runs, stepped foundations, and access for plant. Get a measured topographic survey with levels to Ordnance Datum before you design anything. Designing on a flat assumption and discovering a 1.5m fall is how a foundation package doubles.

9. Covenants, easements and wayleaves

Restrictive covenants can prohibit building, limit what you build, or require someone's consent — and that someone may no longer exist, which is its own problem. Easements and wayleaves for services crossing the plot dictate where you cannot build. A sewer under your proposed footprint means a build-over agreement or a redesign.

10. What the neighbours will say

Not a legal check, but a practical one. Overlooking, right to light, construction access, and party wall matters all get easier if you have spoken to people before they read about it in a site notice. Objections rarely stop a reasonable scheme, but they cost time, and time on a self-build is money you are usually borrowing.

The point of all this

It is not to find a perfect plot. Perfect plots are bought by developers before they reach you. It is to price an imperfect one correctly, and to know which problems are solvable with money, which are solvable with design, and which are not solvable at all.