Organising tradesman on a property development - questions to those experienced

[pds999]

Hello all. I am new to this forum (as of today) and am just about to branch out into property development with my partner. We have around £250k capital to invest and have targeted our market already (east midlands: Peterborough, Lincoln and Grantham areas). However my query is around some specifics of how to actually go about project managing a development so any advice from those of you much more experienced would be invaluable:

1. Often on TV you see people buy a property and turn it round in 4-6 weeks. Every time I have tried to get builders into my own property there is a minimum 2 month lead time before they can even start, let alone complete the job. How do developers minimise this lead time? Is it even possible?

2. For my own property, I used an all-in-one service for doing up my bathroom and kitchen (from somewhere like B&Q) who offer a design, supply and fitting service. Is this really the cheapest way of refurbing a property's bathroom and kitchen or am I better off buying the fittings myself (from somewhere like Wicks) and getting a builder to fit? Any ideas?

3. The other thing you see on property programmes is estate agents giving the prospective developer a likely valuation for when the property is complete. I assume an estate agent would be unlikely to just come in and do this for free on a property you don't even own yet, and the agents you are buying from are unlikely to be wholly unbiased. So how do you get a valuation and ideas on what will add the most value before you buy so you can gauge what to buy and what is cost effective and what isn't? Would you perhaps get this information from a surveyor/valuer at the time of survey?

Many thanks for any advice...

[bonetti consultants]

Hi,

I would recommend talking to the agents over the phone, explaining what you intend to do and ask them what would be the best for that area considering the market conditions, remember the agents want to sell your home and only earn money as a result.

Go with the average, being realistic and remember work with the worst case scenarios, that way any profit will excel your expectations.

Bonetti Property Development Consultants -Property Developers