Buy your own home - from Ikea

THE company that filled British homes with flat-pack furniture, Ikea, is now planning to sell flat-pack homes. Aimed at first-time buyers, the one-bedroom apartments should be available within months at the Swedish firm's superstores

Ikea has teamed up with two housing firms to find sites for the units, which should cost around £70,000. The outskirts of London, Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool are likely targets.

The good news for anyone who has wrestled with a flatpack wardrobe is that the homes don't have to be DIY, though that is an option.

Housing firms The Hyde Group and Paramount Homes will arrange prefabricated construction and delivery from Ikea subsidiary BoKlok. The idea has been pioneered in Scandinavia, where prefabricated homes are widely accepted. It would fit in with John Prescott's action plan to create a further 80,000 homeowners by 2010.

Although an exact design has still to be approved, the apartments will be arranged in two-storey blocks of six. They will have open-floor plans, high ceilings, large windows and private balconies. There should be a separate car park and a shared garden and inner courtyard.

BoKlok, which housed 500 Swedish families in flatpack homes last year, favours seven blocks on each site. 'Every project has a traditional village atmosphere,' said an Ikea spokesman.

The homes will be officially unveiled at the end of this month and are expected to go on sale in March. The first Flatpack Flats are expected to be ready by the autumn.