I’ve been struggling to come up with a title for this article and wanted to make it appropriate for the beginning of the year. With nothing coming to mind I decided to finish reading a book given to me by my sister for Christmas. It’s an inspiring and heartfelt book called, “If I could tell you just one thing…” by Richard Reed, Co-Founder of Innocent drinks. It’s a book containing valuable advice from remarkable people where, for me, a common theme unfolded…

Luckily we have continued our theme from last quarter by securing what (potentially) should be our largest deal to date. I don’t want to get too carried away as it’s a ‘subject to’ deal, but all being well a £1.5m profit over 15 months is forecast. This is our own deal so there are no JV partners involved and it’s our biggest deal, profit wise, but as I said, this is a planning gain deal so an element of uncertainty is involved, though our planning consultant will mitigate part of this.  This deal came via our trading department as a direct to vendor lead and it was soon apparent that this was a development deal. The site is in North London with just over 10,000 sq ft of buildable area where we hope to build between 8 and 12 units.