Decide what you want before a plot decides it for you.

Almost every self-build that goes wrong went wrong before the land was bought. Not because the buyer was careless, but because the first plot they could actually have is the one they talked themselves into, and the compromises were made one at a time with nothing written down to measure them against. This part starts before you own anything.

What actually matters to you, ranked while you are calm

The things that make a plot right or wrong for you, set out in a standard order. You rank the ones that matter and leave the rest alone. Sun aspect and evening orientation. Privacy and overlooking. The real commute rather than the advertised one. Broadband as measured rather than as promised. Slope, and whether a digger can get in.

The factors list on a real build: each factor with where the reader put it — must have, should have, nice to have or not this time — and the date they ranked it.

Everything ranked, with where you put it and when you decided.

Four buckets: must have, should have, nice to have, and not this time. The list is the book’s — thirty years of what people find out too late, turned into cards you sort — and the ranking is entirely yours. Nothing is scored and no plot is recommended to you.

The must-have factors on a real build: sun aspect and evening orientation, privacy and overlooking, slope and getting the diggers in, flood risk of all three kinds, walk to the village pub, and services or the thirty-thousand-pound field.

Six must-haves, including one that is a joke until it happens to you.

Services, or the £30,000 field.A plot four hundred metres from a main is a different plot, and nobody tells you that at the viewing. Neither does the particulars. It is on this list because it has emptied people’s contingency before they turned a sod.

Recording why a factor matters: the factor, or something the book does not list, and a free-text box headed why, in your own words — with a ranked factor above showing the reader's own sentence and a note that it came from the book's living-with-it factors cards.

South facing garden is very important to me— the reason, in the reader’s own words, against the factor.

Each one carries why, in your words, and you can add anything the book does not list. That sentence is what you read back in month four when a plot is cheap and south-facing is suddenly negotiable. It is not there to stop you changing your mind — it is there so you notice that you are.

The not-this-time factors: conservation area, AONB and National Parks, power lines and pylons, listed buildings including next door, green belt, and ransom strips.

Not this time is a decision, and it is recorded as one.

Green belt, a ransom strip, a listed building next door. Ruling something out on purpose is worth as much as ruling something in, because six months later somebody will send you that plot and you will not have to work out again why it is not for you.

And what you can actually afford

Beside the factors sits the first-pass appraisal: what the land, the fees, the ground, the connections and the build itself add up to before you have a drawing, and therefore what a plot can cost and still work. That grows into the budget as real prices arrive, so the first number you write is the beginning of the record rather than a note you throw away.

Then every plot gets judged against the same list

Plots you are looking at go on a shortlist, each with what you found, what you asked, and what did not add up. The same factors you ranked are what each one is measured against, so comparing two plots is comparing two answers to the same questions rather than two impressions from two different Saturdays.

A plot on the shortlist: what the reader calls it, its address and postcode, where they are with it, and beneath that every move they recorded — first interest, visited, offer made, offer accepted, each with its date.

One plot on the shortlist, and every move it made — first interest to offer accepted.

Each plot carries where you are with it and how it got there. Three plots on the go, two of which went quiet and one of which you are now buying, is a normal search — and eight months later the dates are the only honest account of how long any of it took.

And the free plot check runs on any address before any of this: what the ground used to be, on the old Ordnance Survey sheet. No account, and it stays free.

Start seven days Look round a real build