Liverpool-founded Urban Splash wants to blaze a new trail and become the ‘designer brand for housing’ with its new scheme, House.

Speaking at ArchitEx 2015, co-founder Tom Bloxham discussed the concept, allowing prospective owners to purchase a house designed and personalised to fit their vision – compared to buying a new car.

Already launched and sold out in the North West, the built-to-order homes are seen as a strong niche market that will only grow.

Tom said: “For a long time I’ve fascinated by housing, fascinated by the fact that 64% of the population, when they consider moving, don’t even consider buying a new build, they only consider an old house because by and large, I think old houses have been badly designed.

“We want to become the designer brand of housing but also to give individuals the ability to design their own house. Everyone loves Grand Designs but costs you the need to be a millionaire and take you nearly a full year of your life.”

A key motivation for the scheme was the lack of inspirational design by house builders in the current market, and Tom has compared the experience to buying a new car.

Tom commented: “What’s being built out there by many house builders is not particularly inspiring, not the kind of place that me and my friends want to live round.

“We want to give people to personalise it; when you buy a car, you pick what car you want. Is it a convertible? Is it an estate? Is it diesel? What colour do you want it? What size do you want it? Why not do a same thing with a house?”

The layout of the schemes hark-back to Georgian housing and can be positioned in crescent, squares and streets with communal green spaces.

“The inspiration was the great Georgian streets that we all know and love. [With] living and sleeping in the front and back, servicing in the middle with a huge variety of space,” he added.

The personalisation is like car purchasing with a questionnaire of size, layout, the number of people, living upstairs or ground floor etc. all built in the UK.

Tom said: “Made entirely in a factory in the UK, each one is built to order to the customer’s specification in clean, dry factory conditions – much better quality than building outside, tighter tolerances, really well insulated, really thick walls that are strong enough be craned into place and built floor by floor and then actually transported to site so there’s a minimum of site works, minimum of disruption to neighbours and assembled in less than a day per house.

“[They’re] creating a typical terraced set-up with a very different style of interior than most contemporary new build housing. We think it’s going to be a big market.”

Related posts:

Experts debate building on green belt sites Prominent Liverpool property developer receives prestigious accolade Townhouse development proposed for Liverpool’s L3 area New homes planned for derelict Park Road site Plans for £80m skyscraper at Princes Dock revealed Everton FC reveals plans for Goodison Park revamp