The detail

Everything we’d want to know before putting our name down.

The short version is on the front page. This is the long one.

Honest numbers

Targets, not promises.

These are what we’re designing to. They’ll move with the site, the final design and the market, and we’ll keep this list honest as they do.

Home: Three bedrooms, about 85 m² over two floors, in a terrace of five. Your own freehold. A three-storey family home of about 115 m² is being designed alongside it.
Target price: around £255,000
Set by what it costs to build well, not by what the area will bear. The three-storey home would be around £330,000 to £345,000.
Running costs: Designed to EPC A with a heat pump and your own solar. Residents of a certified Passivhaus scheme in Colchester report about £9 a month for heating and hot water.
Service charge: around £45 a month
Grass and planting, one insurance policy, play inspections, the Pavilion’s upkeep and the accounts. Laundry and guest room are pay-as-you-use. For comparison: a new estate in Limavady charges £115 a year for its open space; Marmalade Lane in Cambridge charges £1,093 a year for a full common house with a gym.
Parking: Two spaces per home, and two shared electric cars between the twenty.
Where we are: Early. Northern Ireland first: we’re talking to the owners of a plot near Belfast, then it’s planning. Registering costs nothing and tells us where to build first.

The homes

Two storeys for most. Three for families who want the top floor to themselves.

Three-bedroom homes of about 85 m² in short terraces of five: cream render, silver larch, blue-black slate with the solar panels built in, dark frames, and a big glazed door onto the green. Timber-framed and built fabric-first, with a heat pump and your own solar, designed to EPC A. The three-storey version is about 115 m²: the same footprint, with two bedrooms and a shower room on the top floor where teenagers can be teenagers.

Indicative floor plan, two-storey home

Living room with the glazed door onto the green, kitchen and dining at the back, three bedrooms and the bathroom upstairs. Garden homes open onto their garden at the back; back-gate homes open onto their yard and cars. Both share this plan. 85 m² is the size England’s space standard sets for a three-bed, four-person home.

Money

Can we afford it?

Information, not advice. Check the current rules with a lender or Co-Ownership before you rely on any of it.

Stamp duty: First-time buyers pay none on a home up to £300,000, so none on the £255,000 target.
Borrowing: Two people on Northern Ireland’s median full-time wage (£37,100 each, 2025) could borrow about £334,000 at 4.5 times income. Some lenders lend first-time buyers 5.5 or 6 times.
Co-Ownership: Northern Ireland’s shared ownership scheme covers new homes up to £230,000: you buy a 50% to 90% share and pay a low rent on the rest. We’re designing a few homes to come in under that line.
Green mortgages: Several lenders offer a lower rate or cashback on EPC A and B homes. Timber-framed terraces with render and larch are standard for lenders and for Co-Ownership.
Running costs: An EPC A or B new build costs about £1,574 a year in energy against £1,995 for a band D home of the same size (90 m², 2025 prices). Swapping oil for a heat pump saves about 4.5 tonnes of CO2 a year in a four-bed detached house.
Will it hold its value?: Nobody can promise that. What the evidence shows: homes on low-traffic streets in one London borough rose 11% against 7% nearby over four years; homes within 100 m of green space carry a 1 to 2% premium; Marmalade Lane homes resell through ordinary estate agents with no price cap.

This isn’t new

Other people have built it. We’ve been to look.

Marmalade Lane, Cambridge

42 timber-framed homes around a car-free lane and a shared garden, finished in 2018 by a developer with the future residents. 98% of residents say they regularly stop and talk with their neighbours. It won a RIBA National Award.

Goldsmith Street, Norwich

93 council homes in Passivhaus terraces, with fuel bills up to 70% lower, according to the council. It won the RIBA Stirling Prize, Britain’s top architecture award, in 2019.

Denmark, since 1972

Neighbourhoods around a shared green with a common house have been normal in Denmark for fifty years. Most of the ones built since 2020 are developer-led and rented.

How long does it take? Springhill in Stroud, with a developer in charge, went from offer to move-in in about three years. Community-led schemes have taken six to eighteen years. That’s why this one is developer-led.

Why

Plenty of us work for companies that recycle, that plant, that give something back. Then we put the biggest cheque of our lives into a house that burns oil, on a street where nobody knows anybody. Nobody chose that. It’s just what gets built.

Our grandparents borrowed milk from next door. Their kids played out until the street lights came on. Three in four people say we were closer to our neighbours twenty years ago, and the surveys agree: fewer of us chat to the neighbours, fewer of us trust them, fewer of us borrow so much as a ladder.

Ecommunity is a bet that people would choose differently if the choice existed. Warm homes that cost almost nothing to run. A green instead of a cul-de-sac. The things you need twice a year owned by the street. Community, by design. Denmark has built neighbourhoods like this since the 1970s. We’re starting in Northern Ireland.

Questions

The things people ask first

Is this a commune?

No. It’s a normal neighbourhood of freehold homes with their own front doors, bought with normal mortgages. What’s different is the green. Residents own it together through a management company, so the kids can use it and the cars can’t.

Where does my car go?

Every home gets two spaces. Garden homes park in the court by the road and walk to the door under a covered porch, 55 m at the furthest. Back-gate homes have two spaces and a charger at the back gate. Two shared electric cars are there for the days you need another one.

Garden home or back-gate home?

A green of twenty homes is 60 m wide. That’s room for a proper green and either a garden or the car at the door, not both. So half the homes have an 8 m garden and park in the court. The other half have two cars at the back gate, a patio onto the green and a first-floor terrace. Tell us on the form which you’d pick. The split can change.

Two storeys or three?

Both, we think. A two-storey 85 m² home for first-time buyers and downsizers, and a three-storey family home with the top floor as the kids’ floor: two bedrooms and a shower room where teenagers can be teenagers. Same terrace, same width, a stepped roofline. The mix depends on who registers.

Buy or rent?

Buy, mainly. We’re also looking at keeping a few homes to rent, so you can try the street before you commit, or live here while you save the deposit. In Denmark most new neighbourhoods like this are rented. Tell us on the form which you’d want.

Can I get a normal mortgage?

That’s how it’s designed: freehold homes, a standard management company, no price caps and no rules about who you can sell to. We’ll confirm it with lenders before anyone commits to anything.

What will it cost to run?

The homes are designed to EPC A, timber-framed and fabric-first, with a heat pump and solar on every roof. For scale, residents of Cannock Mill, a certified Passivhaus scheme in Colchester, report about £9 a month for heating and hot water. The service charge estimate is around £45 a month for the green, the Pavilion, play inspections and one shared insurance policy; the laundry and the guest room are pay-as-you-use.

Where, and when?

Northern Ireland first, in the kind of suburb people grew up in and can’t afford to go back to. We’re talking to the owners of a plot near Belfast now, and then it’s planning. Registering costs nothing and tells us where to build first. People on the list hear first and choose first.

Are the pictures real?

No. They’re artist’s impressions of what we’re designing, made from our plans. Architects will draw the real thing, and it will change. The site plan and floor plan are indicative too.

Who’s behind it?

A family from Northern Ireland, with local architects, a builder and lenders to come. We’d rather the idea was the famous bit.