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Hi everyone. My first time on any kind of forum like this, so not sure exactly how it works! I have just started a new job and a complete career change working alongside a property development manager who helps landowners develop new homes. A new avenue the company is taking is to start managing custom builds, where we would plan and develop the project from start to finish, on a fully serviced plot of land. There are a few points I need to learn on, one of which being funding for custom builds. I understand that the (eventual) homeowner can get a specialist self/custom build mortgage. However, is there such a thing as a company (be it a house builder, investor, or something similar) who will part exchange your current house, as a partial loan? Let's say the current house is worth £70k, and we need £150k for the custom build project. We part-ex the current house and get £150k in return, but only actually borrow £80k, because the rest is in the house. Am I making sense? Would I be right in thinking that you could only do this if you owned the house outright, and not if you still had a mortgage on it? The other option could be releasing the equity in your current property to fund the custom build project. Does anybody have any advice on how that would look? The other area which I am interested in is the serviced plots themselves. How much preparation work does the landowner do on the plot before selling it? I understand that all utilities and access to a highway is provided - but will a physical boundary be in place, such as fencing? Is there a physical, structured driveway? Or is it literally, just a plot of land, plus the utilities? Please forgive my naivety, it is an area I have next to no knowledge in so I'm taking baby steps to learn what I can! Thank you in advance for any advice you can give.

Hi all, I've found a plot of land we are potentially going to purchase. It has full planning permission that has previously expired, so I'm in the process of going through all the documents on the planning portal. With this being our first self build, and the first time at really looking at this info in detail, it has obviously thrown up a few questions (that someone will hopefully be able to help me with!). There is a very detailed 'Design & Access statement'. This includes statements about the following : + Having a ground test to check if suitable for soakaway- and for this to be approved by BC + Being within 250m of a former landfill site - a scheme for monitoring/mitigation in respect of landfill gas to be submitted for prior approval to protect future occupants + Water board- imposition of condition req. details of proposed surface/foul water. Also, as full planning permission has been granted, is there anything that could stop the build in regards to existing draining/sewers or any other utilities running through the plot, or would this have been checked during the planning/design period. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Jamie

Help!! Myself and my partner currently own 2 buy to let properties as well as our residential. For years, I have had my eye on a juicy bit of unused land close to where we live. It's sort of tacked-on to a very popular residential estate, and it's just sitting there, totally overgrown and with a fence around it. Finally today I got myself in gear and did a Land Registry search and found out who owns it, and it turns out to be privately owned by a couple who live in the cottage backing onto it. They purchased it back in 2005 and are clearly not using it, so I have a couple of questions about what I should do now: How can I politely make an approach to these people, knowing only their address, to see if they are interested in selling the land? Has anyone done this? I don't want to get it wrong and upset them. Is there any way to be sure that it's suitable for a residential development of 1 - 2 houses? On the title there is a Restriction worded as follows: "Option to purchase in favour of [the local County Council] contained in the Transfer dated [....2005] referred to above for 20 years from February 2005." Can anyone translate this? I've had a Google search but I'm worried that this basically means they have to sell the land back to the County Council before any private buyer? Thank you in advance for any advice in this area!! Pippa

Hi all, I am looking for a few pointers regarding mortgages and things I should be aware of when I start to meet mortgage brokers to discuss our (potentially complicated/interesting) current situation and future plans. My girlfriend and I have a mortgage on our current home of £210k, but having renovated it and built extensions etc it is now worth around £400k. We both want to start investing in property (I am an accountant and she is a property manager for a letting agent, so we earn a reasonable wage at the moment and our skills should stand us in good stead to work with property). There are a few things that are all going to be happening simultaneously over the next few years that could make our financing quite tricky which I will try and give an overview of below, please bear with me! 1 - SELF BUILD - In addition to our own home, my girlfriend owns some land and a barn which had been part of her family farm. We are in the process of trying to obtain planning permission for this to be converted to a residential dwelling with the possibility of having some holiday lets attached to it. To carry out the renovation/construction work we would need to obtain a self build mortgage. Given we already have the land which, once permission is obtained, could be worth £150-£200k We should not have a problem getting a self build mortgage I hope. 2 - REMORTGAGE - Whilst the barn conversion mentioned above is exciting, this would likely be our 'forever' home, so we do not count this as 'investing' in property. So, as far as our income will allow, we would still like to remortgage our current home and get on the BTL investment ladder as soon as we can. If we remortgaged our current home to 85%, we would hopefully release £130k of equity to invest. 3 - CONVERT TO BTL - At some point during the next mortgage term (assuming minimum two years) it is possible that we would complete the barn conversion and want to move in, or perhaps money would become a little tight near completion and we may need to move in with my partners family. If we were still within the initial mortgage term on our remortgaged home, we would likely need to convert this to a BTL mortgage to be able to rent out our home for some extra cash and not be in breach of mortgage conditions. 4 - BTL MORTGAGES vs COMMERCIAL MORTGAGES - Whilst all the complication above is going on, we would want to use the initial equity released (say £130k) to buy BTL properties. I would hope this would be straight forward enough if we used the money as deposits for say 75% LTV BTL mortgages, but if we put the £130k into a limited company, given that we have no track record, are there likely to be any commercial mortgages that would lend to the new company with £130k of funds invested by the shareholders (my girlfriend and I)? In relation to pint 4 above, I was initially dead set on BTL properties owned in our own names, but now that I may get stung with additional tax as a higher rate payer, I have begun to look into using a company to invest in either residential properties or commercial property (my brother is a commercial property solicitor and my girlfriends brother is a commercial surveyor, so if we can obtain commercial finance we may have a great depth of skills to draw on). Any useful comments or pointers on things I should look out for/ask brokers about or common pitfalls are very welcome. I would also welcome recommendations/contact details of brokers with sufficient skill to tackle a situation such as ours. We might be biting off more than we can chew, but you only live once so we may as well have a crack at it! If we only achieve half of what we want to or it takes twice as long as we hope, at least we will still be moving in the right direction. Thanks all for your patience. - David.

Enjoyed the book, thought I'd sign up to this forum and find out a bit more. I don't know everything but an happy to help where I can. Areas of interest: Development - Big rewards, big risk. Investor/B2L - Capital growth plus income - Holding 1 x Reading flat, 2 x 4 bed homes. Hope I can help out. Darren

Desperately seeking a financial wizard/accountant/bookkeeper to help me prepare for my first re mortgage to release equity for a self build / BTL strategy I have a salary of £26k incl overtime, plus around £20k of self employed + rental income (commercial property sub lets, lodger and parking) I've been doing my own tax returns for years and as I'm so conditioned into maxing my expenses to pay as little tax as possible, I feel it would be wise to employ a suitable wizard with a sound understanding of the current requirements of lenders to give me the best outcome. I need to be sure what types of income, (specific to my circumstances) will be considered valid by potential lenders so I can submit 1 tax return at the end of jan, and the next at the start of April and satisfy the 2 years requirement for self employed My current mortgage is guarantored and expires in April 2016, I would like to get this going beforehand however and am not tied into a mortgage deal, on the SVR currently I'd like to keep my flat to let, and use the as much of the 400k ish equity to self build, and possibly to buy a cheap ish BTL also if possible Can anyone kindly make a recommendation? Many thanks! Mike