what have I learned?

Well this has been my first project and I have learned an aweful lot of lessons that I can carry forward onto my next project.

1 Plan everything - plan the purchase, plan the development and most importantly plan how you are going to spend your money and your time. Budget and schedule are paramount to the property developer. I thought that I had a healthy budget, even including a contingency of 10% but even this turned out not to be enough.

2 Stay focused. It is easy to get emotionally involved in the property and end up adding expensive touches simply because you have always wanted one. You have to decide if the expensive wooden floors would not only appeal to your target buyers, but will they be willing to pay more for it?

3 Stay sensible. Make a list of the of all the jobs that you want to do and then sleep on it! Price each job and then decide if the job more than pays for itself in increasing the asking price. Always undertake essential work, being sensible about adding favourite touches and then completely ignore the unnessarily expensive ones.

4 Be realistic. You are never going to achieve a sales price considerably above the ceiling price in an area by simply adding more 'things'. If you are renovating a 2-bed terrace, fitting it out like a penthouse suite may actually alienate some of your possible buyers. And spending more on the development will not necessarily mean you will make more money on the sale!

5 Remember the 3 important numbers in property developing - the amount you bought the property for, the amount you spent on it, and how much you can sell it for. Everything else is eye candy! Keeping focused on this is what seperates the amateurs from the professionals - and this is not an easy game in a falling market.

Final push

So we are into the final straights now. The date for finishing is September 27th and I am a woman on a mission. We are over budget, over schedule and I am overdrawn. As I watch the housing markets are in meltdown and I am having a breakdown but I am determined to get this finished.


I am resigned to the fact that I am going to have to rent this in the short term and wait for the sagging market to recover, but I am determined that this is going to be the best rental property in the area!

Budgets and schedules - gone!

I have been looking back over my original budget and I already realise how wrong I was! As an amateur I had absolutely no idea how much things cost. I bought the property for £102,000 and planned to spend £10,000 doing it up - and then sell it for £130,000.



Well that 10 grand is no longer looking realistic! I have spent 5K already and we are not even close to half way through the project. And my planned 8-10 week project is also looking a dim and distant memory. This is week 8 and we are not even close to being finished - floorboards are up, electrical cables hang from ceilings and walls everywhere you look, and there is no plaster on most of the walls.

However, as a beginner the only way onward is upward, and I will know better next time! This is a very steep learning curve, and as long as the curve is heading upwards and not down the plughole I am happy!

What have I done?

Now I am scared!

My Dad came to the first project meeting and being quite handy himself he has pointed out areas that I hadn't considered or budgeted for. The electrics looks shot! The floorboards throughout the house look like they need replacing and the plaster has to be pulled off the walls and re plastered. All expensive jobs on my meagre budget. Fortunately Dad knows 'people' so the quotes are gonna come in thick and fast. Being the world's best Dad, he is going to work alongside my brother on this projects - and unlike Tim I won't have to pay Dad. The difference being that paying Tim means I can have greater demand on his time than I can on Dad's who still has to earn his crust.

But we have made a schedule of works and pinned it to the wall in the dinning room so Tim knows where to start. I have amended my woefully inadequate time guesstimate from 8 weeks to a more realistic 12 weeks so we shall see how we go.