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Finding a House SiteFinding a house site is the obvious first stage of wanting to build your own home. Your first decision is to whether buy a suitable plot or decroft a portion of a croft. The croft we bought is a 'freegift' croft on the island of Gt. Bernera, which means we don't have to decroft (take it out of crofting tenure) as we own it outright. This 'freegift' was an option given by Lord Leverhulme, the owner of the Isle of Lewis back around the turn of the 20th Century. Those that took it up, meant they owned their crofts outright, whereas those that didn't kept on with their croft tenancies. For some particular reason, Gt. Bernera was the one place where the 'freegifts' were taken up more than any other. Most of the rest of the Outer Hebrides, the crofts are in 'crofting tenure' which involves certain rights which is overseen by the Crofter's Commission. Finding and buying a plot of landIn recent years, land prices have gone up considerably, but the prices are still very cheap compared to the mainland. A few years ago, you could get a 1/4 acre plot for £500, but now they can cost from around £20,000. Stornoway, being a town area, has the highest costs for plots whereas the further out you go, the cheaper it is - apart from the west coast of Harris as this is a prime beach front beauty spot. There has been quite a number of people buying up land in Harris to build self-catering holiday homes recently and this has driven up the prices phenomenally - pricing local first time buyers out.The first port of call to find a plot is to check the estate agents in Stornoway as they cover all of the Outer Hebrides as well as any of the 'for sale by owner' websites (link on Relocation Guide). The price for plot will also depend on whether Outline Planning permission has been granted or not. Expect higher prices if it does. When you decide on a plot, get a land survey done to see that it is actually suitable for building on and what, if anything, extra it needs - such as drainage (very important here with the boggy soil), water mains and other services and the costs of installing those and access. Be aware that there are several plots of land going that some of the farms are selling off - and the land is basically a peat bog! Do not, whatever you do, buy a piece of land sight unseen just from pictures off a website without coming up here first. I know of people who have gotten stung this way. Once you've got a suitable plot, then you contact a solicitor licensed to practice in Scotland to handle the conveyancing, which is pretty much the same as for buying a house. You don't necessarily need to use a local island solicitor for conveyancing, though it does make it easier for communication. If you are a cash buyer, the process should not take more than 2 months to complete. If it does, keep pestering your solicitor to see what the hold up is. If your solicitor appears to be dragging their heels, threaten them with finding another one. If it's the 'other side', urge your solicitor to put pressure on them. It took us nearly 9 months to finalise our purchase. Some of it to do with solicitors, some to do with getting a survey and valuation done (as it wasn't advertised and pre-valued) and price negotiation with the seller. The seller's solicitor's staff wasn't very efficient either - they'd write a letter with an offer and forget to insert the offer, for example! We had used an off-island solicitor to prevent a 'conflict of interest' as the seller had used all three solicitors for various reasons in Stornoway. This also slowed things down considerably too. Decrofting a plotDecrofting a plot on an already existing croft is another way to go. Before you decide to decroft, there are certain rules and regulations about doing this - as how many house sites have already been decrofted with that tenure? Our croft here in Coll has already had 3 houses on it, so there can be no more house sites decrofted.There is quite a process you have to go through to decroft. Here is a .pdf with information on what that entails from the Crofter's Commission: Decrofting Guidelines from Crofter's Commission For up-to-date information on decrofting, you can contact any of the solicitors/estate agents in Stornoway or you can go to the Crofter's Commission website below. Crofter's Commission
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