TPP384: Development projects and lockdown: How one investor faced this nightmare scenario

A couple of weeks ago The Robs interviewed serviced accommodation specialist Chris Ryder to find out how the coronavirus had affected his business. Well now they’re back this week with another guest, Natalie Gascoyne who’s going to talk us through how she handled renovating two major projects through lockdown.  Natalie is the owner of Davis Properties and she’s no stranger to tackling plain BTL’s and HMO’s. At the moment she’s currently working two commercial-to-residential conversions and we’re keen to find out how those have been affected by what’s currently going on. When COVID-19 first hit, Natalie was due to exchange on two properties, so rather than pulling out completely and losing thousands that she’d already invested, she decided to delay the process.  Unfortunately, one project was delayed further with another party member pulling out, however, on the other property she managed to bag a £30,000 saving!  How? You’ll have to tune in and listen to the rest of Natalie’s story... We don’t often talk about commercial-to-residential projects on the podcast as it’s never really been a strategy we’ve advised investors to do.  But Natalie seems to have quite a good strategy in terms of the kind of properties she looks for and the areas that she sources them in.  It’s certainly not the kind of project for the faint hearted and you’ve definitely got to be able to envision the end product to take something like this on.  So who knows, after hearing about Natalie’s journey and strategy, maybe this could be something to consider for your next purchase.    In the news this week, it seems like the rest of Great Britain weren’t too pleased when England received a stamp duty holiday. Now it seems that Scotland and Wales have jumped on the bandwagon and are also offering a stamp duty holiday up to £250,000. However they are slightly different… In Scotland investors still have to pay the surcharge which is 4% and in Wales you have to pay the surcharge and property investors are exempt from the stamp duty holiday. So some good news across the country, even if investors won’t 100% benefit from it.   This week’s Hub Extra it’s a book that Rob D is already calling his book of the year! So you know it’s got to be good. It’s called ‘A Bit of a Stretch: The Diaries of a Prisoner’ by Chris Atkins. He’s more commonly known as a documentary filmmaker who got caught up in a tax avoidance scheme to do with the film industry and ended up getting sentenced to five years in prison!  The book is based on the diaries he wrote whilst in prison and it gives you a really good insight as to what prison life is really like and hopefully it will be the only experience you’ll ever have.   We’d love to hear what you think of this week’s Property Podcast over on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. You might even have a topic you’d like us to cover in the future - if so, pop us a message on social and we’ll see what we can do. Make sure you’ve liked and subscribed to our YouTube channel where we upload new content every week!  If that wasn’t enough, you can also join our friendly property community on the Property Hub forum. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.