Devon – Land Inheritance

Our client inherited a building plot in Devon which had detailed planning permission for an executive six bedroomed home.

Our client had obtained a price to build the house at £385,000 from what she believed was a trusted local tradesman and had been told by a local estate agency that once complete the property could be sold for approximately £500,000.

100% build cost with no experience

Our client had no experience whatsoever of property development and would be classed as “asset rich but cash poor”, so needed 100% of the build cost.

UK Property Finance provide a free appraisal service and subsequently met on-site with our client to review her proposal. Experience led us to believe that the quoted build cost did not make sense, putting the whole project in financial doubt, as it seemed very excessive. As such we introduced our client to a “fixed price tendering process” and for comparison reasons, she met with 3 additional qualified and referenced builders and provided them with the synopsis prepared by UK Property Finance. All 3 companies quoted similar prices to each other and all 3 were much lower than the £385,000 that our client had been previously quoted. The build costs averaged around £200,000 and armed with this new figure, we prepared and presented our clients proposal to 3 targeted lenders and negotiated the best possible deal for our client which she subsequently accepted.

Due to our client’s absence of experience, UK Property Finance were heavily involved throughout in providing mentoring support for our client until completion. We visited the site when requested and especially before the agreed five drawdown stages, to ensure that the required works had been completed prior to the surveyor visiting the site thus preventing any delay in funds being drawn and the build being delayed.

UK Property Finance provided excellent quality tutoring support to our client which helped her to learn skills during this project which she could potentially transfer to other projects in the future. As expected, the property was completed on time and on budget and with this we provided guidance to our client in selecting the most appropriate estate agency and contract by which to market the property.

Our client used the profits from the property sale to invest in other development projects and continues to use UK Property Finance as a broker, knowing full well that we provide support if required before, during and after the build.