Property Development Advice
Developing property is becoming more and more popular for property investors. It’s another way to create your own wealth through property, along with excellent tax advantages, and you don’t need to be a millionaire or existing property developer to do it. Of course, you need to know what you’re doing, otherwise you could lose money.
At Real Estate Buyer’s Agents, our experienced team can guide and manage your property development project from the initial planning stage, through to completion. As your trusted partner, we are able to arrange the entire project on your behalf, from the development assessment, through to hiring professional designers, builders and contractors to complete your development. In fact, you don’t need to lift a finger – just sit back and watch your wealth being built brick by brick, row by row.
Finding a property to develop
If you don’t already have a development site, we can find a site that accommodates your strategies, goals and budget. Where possible, our clients aim to hold on to their development properties to build their portfolio, so we apply our knowledge, skill and due diligence to building your wealth in the same professional way that we would if we were buying a long-term investment for rental return and capital growth.
Step 1 – Initial Meeting
Property investors need to understand where they are at in terms of property wealth creation, what they want to achieve, and the time frame to make it happen. This is fundamental in terms of developing a strategy that suits their needs.
If you’re new to property investing or developing, we’ll explain some of the key fundamental strategies available to you using simple diagrams and easy to understand language.
If you’re an experienced property developer or investor, we review your existing investment portfolio, and assess whether an enhanced strategy could be more effective in achieving your property goals.
Step 2 – Determining your Development Wealth Strategy
Now that we understand where you are and what you want to achieve with your property development, we help you formulate a realistic strategy to help you achieve your goals. We look at the available development strategies and which of these suit your time horizon, your budget and your objectives.
We look at buying to develop immediately and the different ways to do this, compared with buying to develop later and the best ways to do this.
We also consider strategies where you can stretch your budget by staging the development, enabling you to become a developer with a smaller budget than you may have thought possible.
Step 3 – Property Development Search
Once you give us the go ahead, we think about what types of property and which suburbs are the best for your goals. We also consider how government plans and projections of such things as population, rezoning, infrastructure, land releases and potential oversupply or shortages will affect the properties.
We undertake a comprehensive search of properties available for sale including off-market properties from our contacts in the industry. Very quickly, we refine our search down from a total pool, often in excess of 15,000 properties, to just a handful of outstanding properties with excellent development potential based on our tough selection criteria.
We investigate a ‘short list’ of properties and prioritise the best opportunities for development. We also explore further using government authorities, planning policies, our paid subscription data, our contacts in the market and our detailed experience in selecting development sites.
Step 4 – Property Inspection
Once we have identified the best properties for your strategy, we carry out inspections on your behalf, looking for ‘potential problems’ or expenses to factor in when assessing the merits of one development site over the next. This saves you time and money as we guide you through the selection process.
Step 5 – Due Diligence
As property investment experts, we can evaluate and assess the development site in greater detail once you are ready to proceed. We ensure the Contract of Sale includes a number of conditions that work in your favour, not the seller’s – this gives you peace of mind that the property can be developed the way we envisage.
Step 6 – Accurate Pricing
We obtain up to date information about the development site as well as comparable sales data, as this allows us to determine its true worth. In doing do, we make sure that you never pay too much for a property development site.
Step 7 – Acquisition Strategy
Once we’re convinced the property development site suits your strategy, and it’s within your budget to start with, we will then negotiate with the owner or agent on your behalf. By drawing on our extensive experience, and utilising all the legal tricks of the trade, we can make sure you purchase the development site for the lowest price possible.
At this stage, after the offer is accepted, we arrange a Survey Report to confirm that the property can be subdivided as envisaged. You can also order a Feasibility/Development Report, to help determine what the optimum development will be from a range of options including villas, townhouses, apartments, retaining the home, or demolishing the site completely, and starting afresh.