To watch the full episode on YouTube, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyvWqsDI1oM

In this Q&A episode, Paul looks at preparing yourself for a situation where building materials suddenly become difficult to buy and cost a lot more than budgeted. He also shares the most effective way to derisk a project and explains what the biggest challenges are when building sustainably.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Using a standardized design makes it far easier for you to find an alternative building material and apply that change across your project.

• Design in alternatives, so that you have a potential solution ready to implement if a material suddenly becomes unavailable.

• Fixed price contracts are not always a cast iron way of avoiding rising bill costs. Sometimes enforcing the contract when the price of building materials soars can lead to the contractor going bankrupt. In the end, you hire another contractor and still have to pay more than planned.

• Paul never buys a site with planning permission. During the episode, he explains why and how this helps him to derisk his developments.
• The more sustainably you build the more it costs. But soon new standards will mean everyone builds this way, which will level things up again.

BEST MOMENTS

“We had the biggest build cost increases, since WWII”

“Property development is not some easy get rich quick thing where it always goes the right way, very often it goes the wrong way.”

“Find 100% off-market development opportunities, then negotiate and secure them on sensible terms, and add maximum planning value to them.”

ABOUT THE HOST 

Paul Higgs is a Chartered Planning and Development Surveyor with 40+ years' experience in land, planning and development and a 100% success track record in winning planning consents.

Paul undertook his first refurb project when he was just 17 and then worked his way up from labouring on building sites to becoming Head of Land for renowned plc housebuilder, Barratt Developments. He managed to escape the corporate world in 2002 to set up what is now a multimillion-pound award-winning property development company, Millbank Group. 

In 2013 Paul founded the Millbank Land Academy, the UK’s first training company dedicated to property development; to teach established and aspiring developers the insider secrets the big housebuilders don’t want you to know! 

Paul is also a founding investor and former board director of the industry-leading PropTech Co, LandTech, and has lectured on Advanced Development Valuations on the MSc Property Development at London South Bank University.

CONTACT METHOD

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-higgs

Millbank Land Academy: https://www.millbanklandacademy.co.uk

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/paulhiggsofficial