Morning on this crisp February day! We’ve had a few weeks off but are returning to kick off 2025.
We went a bit quiet on you in January. Busy mapping out the year ahead, along with day-to-day challenges getting in the way.
Our 2024 posts were a mixture of discussing great deals, which we always find helpful to analyse so we can hone the skill of spotting a great deal, along with our thoughts on getting ahead in the property development game.
But to kick off 2025 (even if we’re a bit late sitting here in February), we will share with you how we find great deals, giving ourselves 8 weeks to find such a deal and sharing our progress each week.
But, with no large chunks of cash to invest currently, due to all our money being tied up in other deals, how will we go about this? Plus, we have enough work to keep us busy through to the middle of 2026.
So, what does that lead us to? Options!
We need a deal which we can secure for ideally 24 months on a £1 option fee, have the planning costs (say approximately £30k) to fund, then either trade the deal on for £150k+ profit or exercise the option and develop out ourselves.
Over the next several weeks, we’ll map out how we go about this, what types of deals we go after, the letters we send, share the number of responses we get, how we analyse and evaluate each deal, how negotiations go with landowners, and then hopefully how we ultimately secure a deal.
The outline plan:
- Identify approximately 100 sites in our area
- Send out letters to each landowner
- Await responses
- Appraise deals where we get a response
- Carry out site visits on any promising sites
- Undertake negotiations
- Secure site on £1 option fee
- Take through the planning process
- Secure planning permission
- Trade on the deal or exercise the option
For each step, we will try to share how anyone can do this so you can follow the process and find some deals yourself.
It is pretty basic stuff, identifying sites, sending letters, and negotiating. The key is identifying sites with some potential and how you negotiate with the owners so they want to do a deal with you.
I recently spoke to someone who said they’d sent out 1000 letters and not got a deal! I don’t know what this person was doing or what types of deals they were going for, but after 1000 letters, you should have a significant pipeline of deals. They could have been targeting the wrong kinds of deals or just been awful at negotiating; either way, they’re doing something wrong.
Next week, we’ll start sharing the deals we’re going after.
If you’ve thought about doing this yourself or have not had much success with it, please email us at info@LANDpreneur.co.uk and share your story. We’d love to help you out if we can.
