Many South Africans are choosing to build their own homes instead of buying an existing property. Reasons for this vary but mostly for the cost saving (It is said that a saving of 25% can be made on the capital outlay of the proposed project when building yourself as oppose to buying), other reasons might include the great challenge of taking on a building project or the fact that it can create a great sense of self-achievement.

For a number of reasons the cost of building went up tremendously in the last couple of years. In 1998 an average house with regular finishes could be build for appx. R1800/sqm whereas at the time of writing this document (2006) the rate of building the same house would be around (R3500/sqm) This probably had a huge influence on the