As a new member I hope to get off lightly, but maybe I deserve a dose of common sense advice!
Having looked and put in bids for wrecks to renovate and/or plots anywhere in UK for twenty or more years, I find a plot with wreck for sale(in a not very spectacular area) but the tender guide price is so high that with your cost estimator giving a 2 bedroom brick house at £90000(economy self-build) to £150000(economy package build), no way could the final cost be covered by the values for similar properties in that area. How was the plot tender ‘guide’ price arrived at then?

All I want is to finally get out of a council estate and have a simple energy efficient house on a patch of land big enough to grow my veg.
Seems I’m up against Grand Designs dreamers with bottomless wallets?

I very much doubt a re-build from scratch would get past the planners unless it resembled pretty closely what is there already, tiny victorian solid brick cottage with scotch ceiling bedrooms and lean-to kitchen/toilet thingy. There is no PP to demolish and rebuild in place.

I am guessing to completely renovate in the existing ‘shell’, which still has a roof or at least all the tiles are still there, would cost about the same as a total demolish and re-build?

I simply can’t borrow or raise that kind of capital from the sale of my ex-council house. Even if I was determined to spend more than the final value warranted. A local similar but larger Grade II listed cottage brought up to modern standards several years ago is valued at less than £180,000. The sums don’t add up. Even doing ALL the work myself.

And £80,000 is only the tender ‘guide’ price, ie this is normally at least 30 per cent lower than the successful bid.