New 15-bed HMO on the market.

The team has done a fantastic job to get it over the line, during these very difficult times and have been nothing short of amazing. During the final month of our development, all hell broke loose with the onset of the pandemic.

Whilst the UK government didn’t effectively close down the construction industry, we had to take the difficult decision as to whether or not we would continue with the completion of the development. For me, it was a no brainer – if everyone else was willing to push through, I was too.

It was definitely tough getting supplies in as the major building merchants closed down. They closed down, because they couldn’t justify keeping their operations intact as the big developers, PRS providers closed down. We had to navigate through alternative, smaller building merchants to bring supplies in.

Other non-essential activities like our furniture supplier also closed down which meant we couldn’t get furniture in. The next best thing in (terms of speed) which was IKEA halted deliveries for at least 4 weeks. Luckily our original furniture supplier was able to accommodate us in the end.

And when everything was finally ready to be inspected and signed off, the building inspection company informed us that they didn’t have the capacity/resourcing to undertake the final inspection to issue the final certificate. Thankfully, after a lot of discussions going back and forth we managed to get them to site – they came and issued the final certificate a week later.

All these factors as well as the strict measures implemented on site to maintain social distancing and focus on keeping everyone healthy meant that it pushed us back by a couple of months.

We got there in the end but now we are faced with the real challenge – approaching the lending market.