Like many developers, I started small. In 1985 I began refurbishing houses and over the next couple of years gradually progressed to small-scale development such as splitting houses into flats and building single new-build houses. As I aspired to bigger and better things I also became increasingly interested in learning how to undertake the larger developments that I saw others doing around me.

In those days property education courses just didn't exist so everything I learnt in the first part of my career was by trial and error. To start with I had been buying from either estate agents or at auction (in those days you could still find some pretty-good deals at auction!). However, I was noticing that lots of developments (whether small or larger) that I saw springing-up seemed to have been nowhere near either an estate agent or the auction room.

Also, many of these developments were taking place on odd bits of land or in places where I had no idea it would be possible to build. More annoyingly, these things were happening right in the middle of 'my patch'. Someone clearly knew something I didn't.

Following much investigation I came to the realisation that all of the best deals were actually 'off-market' situations where someone had spotted an opportunity to realise 'planning gain'.