I am building in Cork at the moment, looked into buying last year but realised the market was going to crash so looked into building. I had €340k to play with so on investigation that would buy me a 3 bed semi or a two bed apartment.
Anyway I realised I would be buying a small home that is only built to a semi decent standard so I investigated the self build route. My €340k will now buy me 2550 sq ft 4 bed home on half an acre so we started building a few months ago. The house build will cost €229k (€179k for a basic block build but ours is ICF with concrete floors etc), the land was €50k (from a farmer) and fitting the home out will hopefully cost me around 40k. Thats €320k and another 20k in fees should bring me up to budget. I had this valued last week and even in the existing climate this is worth roughly €430k so even with a continued down turn I should still be possitive equity.
Its a no brainer IMO.