Journal
Commentary on the market, small-site development, planning, and the craft of building a bespoke home — from Phil Baily and the Elizabeth Homes team.
I'm asked to find plots more than almost anything else. The honest truth is the good ones rarely appear on the portals — so here's where they actually come from, and how we find them.
From 6 August, most small sites drop out of mandatory biodiversity net gain. But self-builders lose their blanket exemption a week earlier — so the number that matters now is your site area, not your project type.
New homes get materially greener — and around £4,350 more expensive each — from March 2027. The transitional rules reward acting now, but they work building by building, not site by site.
Most people think there are two ways to build your own home. There's a third — the way developers actually build — and for the right person it's the best of the lot.
SME builders deliver a fraction of the homes they once did. The market is hard — but the ground is shifting toward exactly the small sites we back.
Behind almost every offer on land is one simple sum, worked backwards from the finished homes. Here's the back-of-the-envelope version — so you can see where the number comes from.
The costliest surprises on a development are the ones you can't see — under the ground. Here's what a proper technical appraisal looks for before we commit.
Very few developments are built with the developer's own money. Here's how the funding actually stacks up — equity, debt, and why experience is the currency that unlocks it.
A planning consent looks like a single yes-or-no. Behind it sits a defined process and a small mountain of specialist reports. Here's what's really involved.
The best development sites rarely reach the open market. Here's how they actually change hands — and how to spot potential others walk straight past.
A planning consent is a piece of paper. Turning it into finished homes is a separate job — and the route you choose to build it shapes your cost, your risk and your control.
Every appraisal rests on one number: what the finished homes will sell for. Here's how it's worked out — from comparables to testing whether a market is actually liquid.
The headline price is only half the story. How an offer is structured — deposits, conditions, deferred payments, overage — often matters as much as the number itself.
Two developers can look at the same site and see completely different things. Here's the assessment that separates a scheme worth backing from one that isn't.
