By Enda Brady, Sky News Correspondent
With property prices rising and many young people still finding it hard to get a mortgage, more and more would-be homeowners across Britain are turning to one of the oldest methods of building.
Cob building involves using earth, sand, straw and clay as the raw materials for walls. It's estimated that a three-bed cob home would cost in the region of £25,000 to build.
All that's needed is a plot of land and planning permission - and the right knowledge.
Charlotte Eve runs classes on how to build cob homes from her Norfolk base and says that hundreds of people are signing up to learn the skills needed for their own projects.
"You can't get more sustainable than a cob home," she told Sky News.
"You dig your foundations on site and you use the clay from that foundation trench to make your walls. It's very environmentally friendly and it's also cheap - cheap in terms of construction costs and also in terms of heating the finished home.
"Your costs for the project are extremely low."
Self building accounts for only 10% of the UK market. That's despite lower costs - £150,000 for the average project, which is £80,000 less than a ready-made home.
Tony Tkaczuk from Lancashire is working on an upgrade of his cob cottage and says he'd recommend a self-build to anyone.
"It's very fulfilling actually, you have done it yourself and that's a great feeling," Tony told Sky News.
"You can work together as a team, like my wife and I do. And at the end it's wonderful to think to yourselves 'yes, we did that'."
At the Building Research Establishment (BRE) in Watford, experts monitor construction trends across the UK each year. They point out that around 11,000 projects in Britain last year were self-builds.
"There's a lot of time, energy and emotion required," said BRE's chief executive, Dr Peter Bonfield. "There are a lot of benefits to self-builds, you can feel really proud of what you have achieved.
"There are also a lot of professional companies out there doing this kind of thing day in and day out. So it's a choice really, a big decision for people."
The Government hopes self-built properties could help combat a housing shortfall of 750,000 homes across the UK by 2025.
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