for years first time developers have been saved from disaster by a rising market but then in August 2007 just as a new group of amateurs launched their careers the housing bubble burst the problem was none of them realized just how quickly things were going to fall apart it was a real shot when everything started falling down around our ears really we've never done anything with property before when we decide to guess what let's have a crisis in the property market as soon as you have two sellers and only one buyer price has moved down very very fast as they compete to try and make the sale two-bedroom flats in developments felt incredibly fast even before the rest of the country noticed there was a crash on [Music] by a house covered up into flats and make a truckload of cash it's the formula developers have been relying on for years and exactly what tonight's amateurs are banking on to make their fortunes you bought this house with no money to refurbish it to asbestos flats got planning and then thought let's just do it in the hope that when he just falls out of the sky you're planning on single-handedly turning this house into three flats for sixty thousand pounds we are the advertisement for the idiots guide to develop your property it's November 2007 the property market has tipped into decline but like most people Shawn and Nicola Haller haven't quite realized it yet they're about to kick off their developing careers in Newport South Wales Shawn's a jobbing builder and DIY enthusiast the fact he's been renovating their own home for the last eight years we get everything to a point where it's nearly finished and then we move on to something else before we finish so now we have a new front door no bedrooms upstairs no kitchen no and then we went to bought another house to do Seana Nicola are determined they won't have these kinds of delays on their first proper development which is just as well when you see the amount of work they're planning on doing it's a large three-story terraced house love truly sorry state their plan is to carve it up into three one bed flats but this means three times the work if that wasn't enough Sean plans to project manage the entire job and do all the building work himself with only Nicola two helpers labourer difficult to know how long something is gonna take when we've never really finished anything before but we think once is ages so we will finish it with we 130 miles away in Brentford Middlesex meet twin sisters Loretta Fenton and etosha Andrews [Music] they're both professional singers and along with Loretta's husband graffiti artist David they're hoping to channel their creative energy into property developing the sort of jobs we do be in freelance we don't have pensions in place and property I think is a great way that potentially you can get some long-term security financially but it's 2007 and investing in property is starting to become a very risky business oblivious to what's in store they remain convinced this large five bedroom Victorian house is going to make them serious money by splitting into two separate flats we have absolutely no experience whatsoever a property development and no clue we're aware it's quite a big project but how hard can it be this trio aren't planning to get their hands dirty they've employed a builder but they are planning to share the project managing and divvying this up is never easy you haven't done anything like this before have you I think hopefully we are the advertisement for the idiots guide to developing property if we can do it literally your dog can do it are you confident you can make this thing work I tell all of you there will be a few tough it's already middle because I have the loyalty to my twin and loyalty to my husband peacemaker she could have her work cut ours by late 2007 there's an explosion in new build apartments coupled with a slowing climate making it very hard to sell flat we Russians even so that's exactly what they want to do with this large five bedroom house David Loretta and Natasha's plan is to split the property horizontally and create a garden flat on the ground floor with a maser net above but I think they've missed a hugely profitable trick to beat the markets I think that there may be a simpler way to achieve the same thing end up with more value and and make your lives easier I'm just wondering why you don't divide it vertically because three whole houses always sell more easily than then a leasehold flat anyway and you're gonna get more money for two houses than you are for two flats it'd be quite a skinny house wouldn't it it's still something that someone would buy I mean it definitely would be more appealing than two flats I believe so yes I mean there's there gonna be two freehold houses and ultimately you've got pretty much the same square footage it's just it's tall and thin and sort of short and white automatically I just thought it'd be so much more work to split it down that way rather than across that way I think that you probably would find it simpler to do a vertical split split and I also think you'd make more money on it they bought the property for three hundred and sixty three thousand pounds and have a hundred and eighteen thousand pound budget they plan to sell both flats for six hundred thousand pounds making a whopping one hundred and nineteen thousand pound profit but if they divided the building vertically in half making one three-bedroom house on the left and another three-bedroom house on the right they could boost their total resale right up to a hundred thousand pounds you could be getting three thirty maybe 350 each for them whereas a flat here would be worth maximum three hundred I must say that's sort of put a bit of a spanner in the works and it's something that I had not considered at all they'd also do well to consider that their hundred and eighteen thousand pound budget is very very tight I'm not convinced they've thought this through how are you actually getting the money to do the work on this between us we've got about thirty thousand pounds to start with start the work in the Alsea development like this you could get through thirty thousand pounds in the first couple of weeks there's another property that we've got and it looks like we're gonna have to sell that and use that to have any kind of realistic way of getting the money will that cover all the work that will cover most of it so you'll get thirty thousand pounds of the way through the contract and hopefully by then you might have sold your house to pay the rest of it and if not we will approach in our bank this week to see about loans or whether it's an extension on our credit cards basically you bought this house with no money to refurbish it'll split us up as flats got planning and then thought let's just do it in the hope the money just falls out of the sky but just the little thing standing in our ways the matter of getting a thousand four thousand pounds to do the home in Newport South Wales Shawn and Nick La Jolla have got a similar sized house but they want to squeeze even more flats out of it so what are you gonna do with it hmm well the plan is to turn it into three one-bedroom flats and how much do you reckon that's going to cost probably a lot more than we've got sixty thousand sixty thousand is the budgets for that sandwich is gonna cost Sean and Nicola bought the property for one hundred and twenty nine thousand pounds they have a budget of 60,000 pounds and planned to sell all three flats for a total of two hundred and forty thousand making a fifty one thousand pound profits the budgets tight but unlike the brunt for trio Sean and Nicola plan to do all of the work themselves do you have a trade right so you're planning on single-handedly turning this house into three flats for sixty thousand pounds in six months in six months a busy the years boost if I buy to let mortgages converting houses into flats was a sure way to make money from property but by early 2008 the UK is flooded with one bed new bills and Newport South Wales is no exception for Shaun and Nicola the glut of new flats on the market is threatening to jeopardize their conversion plans there has been a lot of big developments where they've built big blocks for the one-bedroom flats and I wonder whether for your sake whether it's best to add to the the enormous quantity of one-bedroom flats on the market I wonder whether you wouldn't be better having a maize net on the top two floors and a flat beneath and you're spreading a risk that way because because maybe the flat market will lift up a bit in which case you've got one so that's marvellous but you've got an amazing out as well so you're kind of you're spreading a risk away from the one-bedroom flat block that appears to be in Newport of the moment I mean I totally understand ready Kafka's just our figures won't push it I was into thinking of the flats Shona Nicola want to put a one bed flat on each of the three floors of this property with inflated sale prices of 80,000 pounds each I think 60,000 is much more likely but selling the three for 180 thousand pounds wouldn't make my penny personally I'd leave the lower ground floor as a self-contained flat but turn the top two floors into a more sought-after three-bedroom maisonette which should go for one hundred and fifty thousand pounds upping the total sale to two hundred and ten thousand that could at least make them a 30,000 pound profit there's another crucial reason for going with my idea amazing that is going to cost you less money to achieve and that's because building regulations are so stringent now in terms of sound and fire and thermal insulation that to turn these two floors into two separate dwellings as you effectively need to insulate them as totally separate units and if you don't comply you start right all over again and I've been there with flats where one of the walls didn't comply with sound insulation and down the wall came little be decorated skirting on everything and you just don't need that hassle really on budgets it's nicer whether it be an amazing especially bearing in mind you're doing it all yourself I hate to agree with you whatever happens on a tiny sixty thousand pound budget and Shaun doing all the work and management with only Nicola to help us labor this is going to be one difficult development so how's it gonna work with you two you're going to be here all the time just gonna be a full-time proper job Monday to Friday Saturday mornings and what happens what new days agreed cuz because there's only two of you so there's no deciding factor he's gonna win the argument Oh she'll go storming off for our sake and then I'll go home later and then we'll go to the office oh yeah we've got the call at the office which is when we go I don't know if we can talk about bed but we go we get into our bed and we pull our duvet over our heads and we've got a pact that nobody can be arguing the office it always gets resolved FS I would imagine that it's always a way of resolving things in Branford it's day one for Loretta Natasha and David's builders they're cracking on with turning this end of terrace into two houses something of a miracle that works even started his last time I saw them they only had 30,000 pounds which have actually managed to scrape all the money together so we now do have 118 thousand that we needed which is a miracle in itself but it does mean that each month we're gonna be paying about eighteen hundred pounds a month which is really really scary they've borrowed money left right and center and are seriously stretched sticking to their development schedule and running this project with the utmost efficiency of crucial but two weeks in the retro natasha get the big music break we've been waiting for playing as a support act on take that so you cater the opportunities we're having at the moment are things we've worked for we've waited for we've hoped for for such a long time the truth is that the house product does take second place to where we are it's left to David to run the site on his own but he's not there either I've got a lot of work on right now and it's intermittent and so I might be able to be here for a day but then I'm not here on an important day it has sort of been lumped on me to try and sort it out and I'll just have to see what happens this is making Nick the builders job very difficult I've only seen David once or twice showing me hard to get hold off and there are this phone I haven't got the girls numbers that's not an option as the next couple of weeks rollover decisions you're going to have to start being made about certain things and it's going to become a problem if we can't get hold of them a really big problem you know [Music] another two weeks parse and work continues in fits and starts this can be a road to disaster so with Loretta and etosha back in London for rehearsals I've called an emergency meeting on-site you feel you've been here as much as you should have been maybe not exactly as much as I should have been there are a couple of things that I'd like to get the eyes and you know dotted in the t's crossed on do you have a scheduler works not exactly no not exactly means no doesn't would you say that you feel entirely cut out to be a project manager but he's the one who had us have more time so he's the one who's here it would be fairer and I think it probably more beneficial to this getting finished well and on time if you all to have more of a role in the management of this do you think that's fair if it's realistic yeah I mean music is what we're really passionate about Loretta and I and David with his artwork as well but also it is how we make a living but that is the balancing acts this that you've kind of chosen to take on and I don't think that a site is a very easy thing to pick up and drop down as and when life fits around it I personally think that all three of you should meet on site together at least once if not twice a week this is your project it's your money it's it's your baby and it's your neck up necks on the line normally I'd advise one person to take on the role of project management but their lives just make that impossible David Loretta and Natasha are going to have to work very hard at working together it's something that Shaun and Nicola are finding much easier over in Newport Sean's working as the Builder and project manager with Nicola as laborer they've also brought in a spotter prize help but it's still a tiny team for such a massive job [Music] very much time to get my breath back it's week one of their bill you haven't decided to go with the plans for two units they're starting work on a lower ground floor flats down here Sean and Nicola have removed several walls in preparation for their new layout new open-plan kitchen living area units all along here cooker there so far so far TV niccola's right to think open plan areas can appeal in one bed flats but her layout has more than one problem the main living space is right off the busy street and the bathroom next door is a fair old distance from the bedroom at the rear if you're sitting in the sitting room here and someone comes to the door and someone else answers the door and you're in your underwear you're very exposed to that door the bigger reason is that to get from the bathroom to the bedroom you've got to go through all the living space and into the bedroom here and in the middle of the night if you wanted to use the bathroom you've got to go back through all the living space and back into the bathroom here I mean in my head I thought that wasn't that far you know for the bedroom to the bathroom anyway really but I take your point that if you know you want to nip into the loo in the middle of the night is just across there is better could you make a decision now on it do you think or not we could really and if that is a better layout I'm more than happy to take advice from somebody who knows in Brentford's David Loretta and Natasha were a third of the way through their schedule but they're still rarely on-site to make decisions with the major structural work complete the trio prized themselves away from touring and work commitments to visit the site Wow looks so different already looking like two houses now isn't it you know what there is small in it we've just got to completely undo in our minds what this house was before because it was a spacious house before I've come in and think you know you know each room is fairly big wasn't it turn that place doesn't exist anymore worried that the main living areas will seem dark and cramped they come up with a plan to add a set of double doors at the rear of each property but then surprisingly they decide to install doors in just one house there was talk of having double doors here which would have been really nice to let more light in but unfortunately there's a little bit late in the day I spoke to the Builder about it and it's going to cost about two grand to change it to a double door so we're gonna have to stick with it single door really installing double doors is a tiny expense compared to what it would add the sale ability of this property but it's money this trio don't have and to add the problems of underfunding on-site the project is grinding to a halt with the carpenters in today because these ones aren't done we can see everything that he's doing back in London for a few days the girls aren't happy with the way work is progressing I've not been here regularly and each time I've come I've had to look really hard to see what's been done while I've been away and that's really frustrating Nick the Builder is equally frustrated I should say we've got no kitchens so we're delayed in what we're doing there the works pretty much come to a standstill if I if I have been left in charge of getting the kitchens they would have been here three weeks ago and they would have been in by now no so and we would have been well finished David Loretta and Natasha have sunk their life savings into this development and are hoping it will help fund their retirement they can't afford to mess it out in Newport Sean and Nicola are working six days a week but still not out of the basement every time Shawn's doing his job as a builder he's needed as the project manager me and then put me on hold my phone ringing can get to a point where I I can't even remember where I've left my phone sometimes I feel like just leaving my phone and turn it actually turning it off if I got my hands full of tools by the time I put them on the floor I go through my pocket get out my pocket calls gone while I'm trying to find out the figure out how I received my miss converts someone else is really it's just hectic sometimes Shawn is trying but failing to do it all I think it seems to me as though the best thing to do would be to get somebody else on board to offload some of the project management what do you think about that because I'd have to be managing the project manager who's managing me because I wouldn't be able to even let the project manager do but I was wondering whether you offload some of it to Nicola because I know you want to help on this project even agreeing this I know I could see it I probably am guilty of hiding behind him a little bit and thinking Shawn will do it Shawn will ring me I'm sure most all that I'll tell him to do it I'm quite happy to write the note to say this need to be done this amuses them but I fall short of actually doing it because I know he will you don't look completely convinced this is gonna work part of me wonders whether it's it's just that you're a bit of a control freak in you don't want to let go yeah I agree Shawn do you think you're gonna be able to get this up or I'm happy to give it up but Nicola has got to be confident enough to be able to take on would you be prepared to take on this extra work yeah don't ever go as long as he's you'd be confident I'll be ordering the right thing I want to know why I get such good discounts [Laughter] in Brentford there's little sign of progress and the situation has reached crisis point that is the fact but these guys need to get it together quick because they've borrowed hundreds of thousands of pounds and the housing market is about to implode as soon as you have two sellers and only one buyer price has moved down very very fast as they compete to try and make the sale in Brentford David Loretta and Natasha made the right call to steer clear of flats to create two townhouses the bad news is that they're seriously behind on their schedule increasingly frustrated by the erratic progress on site they've called a meeting with their builder it's bit worrying that there's not one single room that seems to be finished the reason we haven't finished is I've taken everyone off the job because I can't afford to keep people here when there's no work all the other stuff that needs to be doing in all the other rooms it's trade work you see the chip is do one thing the plumbers do another and the Spock is doing over it never ever and anything else I'll get more laborers no this is just really confusing me and it would be great if you just went you know what yeah guys it has been a bit but the kitchens Loretta that is the fact having reached stalemate Nick the Builder leaves the job this has become a truly torturous development it takes a month to find a new builder but as they sort out one problem another lose its head they've run out of money you're starting to to keep up the interest payments on the current know that you've got so you yeah you need to get this sold fast you need to get it sold and to get the debt cleared so you don't need to worry about it but a quick sale seems unlikely they've hit on another false economy they've decided to decorate themselves how long are you expecting it to take before you finish to finish all of the decorating about four weeks I think did you've got four weeks that you can dedicate to decorating this full-time you mean eight hours a day yeah no they simply have to hurry up and get this finished it's May 2008 and confidence in the housing market is at an all-time low with mortgage approvals the lowest since records began in 1999 to add to their woes their own mortgage payments at 1800 pounds per month but instead of trying to bring costs down they're adding to their schedule by opting to decorate themselves a professional team of decorators is likely to take probably five six weeks decorate this and I know that the moment you kind of feel you're drowning in the bottom of a pit of deaths and despair but to decorate all of this inside and out it's gonna cost you less than ten thousand pounds and I'm not saying ten thousand pounds is hardly any money because it's not it's a massive amount of money but on top of the debt that you've got ten thousand pounds to service a year is 30 or 40 pounds a month I'd love to get a team of decorators in but it's we just don't have the money and I think another loan would be we can't we would be able to cope the danger is though the longer this project runs on the bigger the overall debt will be a new port the schedule is looking much more positive Shawn's able to get stuck into the building work because Nicholas naprotechnology Thor wouldn't have done this kind of thing you know he did to start it all in his head and probably forgotten lots of things the more I can take away from him the longer day that you can have and Shawn's just the kind of person that if he's done a full day he's satisfied so you know I think there is I think it's working quite well the site is really motoring and now Shawn's tackling the tricky business of sand proofing the two properties to meet the stringent building regulations Oh sister complete nuisance further on down the road there's a guy who's doing a similar acoustic floor and it failed by one Gus about you know I'd read that you know hopefully touch wood that it's that it'll be fine sand tests won't be carried out until both properties are finished if they fail Shawn will be ripping everything out and starting again but back in Brentford things are looking bad money is so tight David Loretta Natasha have no choice but to move into their development when we took on this project we had no idea whatsoever how difficult it was gonna be every time you think it can't go on like this for much longer then it just does [Music] I've been at work today and I've got in and haven't even had time to have something proper to eat and just now getting on with the painting we can't pay anymore to have people in here the finished stuff off and we haven't got the time physically ourselves to finish it off that's pretty much strain on all of us I just totally can't imagine us ever being finished which is really depressing [Music] in Newport the schedulers back on track but now Shauna Nicola are getting spooked by Press reports of the first annual fall in national house prices for 12 years average house price down by seven thousand seven hundred and eighty a quid in Wales in any market you should do your homework and when it's falling is even more crucial but the key is what's happening in your market and there's an easy way to find that out look at the government website for the Land Registry which traces actual sales of properties since you bought this property the market has gone up locally by two point one percent so so although it hasn't risen as much as it maybe did the year before it's still risen I mean there are areas in the market that are in decline but it's quite specific and it's not this kind of house your assets shouldn't stop when you buy the property you need to carry on researching the market and making sure you've got a very good grip on what's happening all the time where developments going on yeah in Bradford is much less rosy 12 months ago Loretta Natasha and David set out to make their fortune from property with no idea of what's in store now law the law just collapsed the banking system is starting to unravel and house sales have dropped by a staggering 80% in Brentford there's now a real worry whether they will make a penny we let you don't have any money left now with begged borrowed stolen everything we possibly can now and that is it [Music] it's November 2008 and they're finished it maybe over schedule but there's no doubt it's a dramatic and successful conversion into three bedrooms twin cottages yeah believe it's finished I think we didn't think this day would ever come and a pair of houses it's funny to see when we think about what original ideas were that actually now we've got two houses that wasn't even part of the original plan even though it's been so hard let's go have a look on the inside each house has a spacious master bedroom and family bathroom on the first floor upstairs the matching loft conversions are a success adding a double bedroom to each house but it's downstairs where the transformation comes into its own the mirror image layouts have kept the conversions simple and successful that is apart from the double doors into the garden there's no denying these are too stylish new properties this was half of one house when you're in the houses individually they each feel in their own right like a really spacious house we just hope in now that it hasn't been hard work for nothing you were hoping that this event would take six months and it's actually taken over a year and I think that your project management was probably not as great as it could have been and that extra six months that it's taken the market has plummeted hasn't it it's been going only in one direction and it's been going there very fast how are you feeling financially at the moment to be honest there's so much debt here we've never been in as much debt as we have it's a miracle that we're standing in this kitchen for me and I haven't sold a kidney or anything like that their original budget increase from one hundred and eighteen thousand to 145,000 which brings the total cost of this project to more than half a million pounds so you're in this project at five hundred and eight thousand in total it sounds like a lot when you put it like that if you turn it into two flats as you were originally hoping you'd be looking at a maximum of five hundred thousand pounds for the two flats and you spent five hundred eight thousand pounds so you'd be making a eight thousand pound loss it's been so much harder than we thought it would be I think I'd be standing here saying it wasn't worth it we failed I think if that was the case now we were standing here and you had to tell us that news I'd probably burst into tears so the question is has turning it into two houses safety bacon really they need at least five hundred and eight thousand pounds to break even [Music] is that flat at the moment in this market are really struggling to break the tone or fifty thousand pound stamp duty by doing it into two freehold houses they've taken into a completely different bracket which is then taken them to a different marketplace based on the flats that we're currently marketing in the area you would have been looking at probably twenty percent of the prices as we're valuing them as houses that prices now are approximately fifteen to twenty percent lower than where they were twelve months ago the market is very tough out there I'm on this area particularly we've seen probably about a fifteen percent drop in the market prices I would value these properties at a combined value of five hundred and eighty thousand pounds I value both properties at combined value of six hundred and ten thousand pounds I value both of these properties a total of six hundred and forty thousand pounds [Music] that's between 580 thousand and six hundred and forty thousand pounds resale between five hundred and eight okay if I may see 640 that's between seventy two thousand pound profit and one hundred and thirty two thousand pound profit the key word being profit the word profit in terms of a return it's between 14% and 25% return which in this market is flipping impressive and it shows that you bought well and made the right decisions along the way oh my goodness the big developers who are building hundreds of houses at a time a lot of them are making a loss so for you to be making a profit is absolutely fantastic evaluation is one thing the question is will they sell I think with the current climate there's been a lot of scare mongering and we've been like oh maybe we shouldn't sell you can't sell now apparently it's a bad time if I was you I'd sell you can't affect the global or national economy you can't affect your lives and this business project has been successful at today's rates and I think that as you made a good profit you need to take the money and run yeah whilst they're unsure whether or not to sell are they more convinced that a career in property is for them so we'll use it again is that it fee you're gonna hang up your developers hats having watch this muddle away through this project do you think that we've got what it takes to do another one if we were to reinvest the money are we crazy are we and we just got lucky or do you think that we'd be able to do it again I think you did get quite lucky with this I've got to say I do you think that I think it was a good buy but more by luck and judgments there is something to be said for doing what you're good at isn't there yeah you're great at property development wait wait it's singing and graffiti are and you know we kind of think we should stick to our own areas oh there's an album in me yet back in Newport Sean and Nicola a months over their original deadline and the market has turned against them although I was reading all these horror stories in the papers and then on on the news I I hope that secretly our house would but the trend and it would be so wonderful that it wouldn't really affect us it's January 2009 the Stamp Duty holiday for properties under one hundred and seventy five thousand has failed kickstart the first-time buyers market government intervention in the banking system hasn't promoted anymore lending and the mortgage market is decimated with buyers few and far between just a Shana Nicola Haller are ready to sell their development in Newport South Wales it's like the end of a chapter didn't somebody who's looming over us and yeah be good to get it away instead of turning this rundown terraced house into three pokey flats it's become a much more saleable three-bedroom maisonette and one bed basement flat inside the maisonette the rooms are bright and airy with simple styling that certainly wouldn't put anyone off the shell was a challenge but the finish is superb Shaun's biggest test though was the stringent requirements for Sam proofing I want to see how good building wigs actually are so do you keep stamping on the floor we're gonna go downstairs and listen to down stats really impressive yeah yeah you can't hear it you men to come and tell me to stop can hear you the once dark and dingy basement has been transformed into a light and bright aspirational apartment the finish is immaculate and the styling in keeping with the top quality theme you took on the most enormous challenge not only was this a big development to do but you only had a sixty thousand pound budget to do it do you now looked at think how do we ever think we could do it that yeah yeah it was a fine sight it was completely unrealistic all that in the beginning wasn't it but then because we've always done everything on a shoestring it seemed like loans of money it's taken them a year to finish in their original budget has left from 60,000 to 93 thousand pounds I think that's pretty impressive to create a maze net and a flat of the quality that you have for those three houses not many people could do it I haven't had a wager yeah so you include happen do you haven't done a little bit of painting have you mmm yeah done a lot more than that so so really you've had a you on full time on this but still nice mm is impressive and especially when you think you bought it for 129,000 a year yeah so it's a total of 220 mm that you're in this project for now that has been the most extraordinary downturn in the market and since you bought what do you reckon that you might be able to get for the pair of the properties together well I have to start quickly as opposed to 225 230 maybe break even yeah pains me to say it so they need to sell both properties for a combined two hundred and twenty-two thousand pounds to break even wow this is amazing fabulous reception space really nice flooring radiates contemporary even in a hard time people want good properties this property really is fantastic buyers are there their focus the aunt of many is the word but they are their prices 50% less than what we were getting last year is what we're achieving though we were marketing the property would hope to achieve offers in excess of 90 thousand pounds from the basement flats and for the upper major net we would hope to achieve well in excess of one hundred and fifty five thousand pounds I value this unit at two hundred and thirty five thousand pounds one hundred and forty thousand pounds the maser net and ninety five thousand for the flat below I find this property at two hundred and thirty thousand pounds that's ninety five for the basement flats and 135 for the Maison acts although Sean didn't takeaways for his years work I think these estimates are amazing considering the downturn in the market since they started what you can't argue with it can do but they're worth more than that it's a review that just takes life put so much effort in I need to see a lot of value out of this and and do you think they were a little bit and perhaps a bit unrealistic about how much they're worth no I think that I think that they're worth that money I think there were that many the market is saying that no one wants to pay it's a harsh reality given the work they've put into this project but Sean and Nicola finally face it head-on and wisely accept an offer for both flats of two hundred and thirty thousand pounds making them an 8,000 pound return it was on the market for about six weeks and we were lucky enough to get buyer who wanted by both together and we fetched not a bad price for it considering our market is now so looking at that we should be pleased with ourselves but it is difficult not to get het up with the money side of it and and and be really downhearted and think what could have happened had you done it two years earlier the fact is we didn't do it two years earlier and we we had to live with the market as it was in Brentford the trio decided to sit at the crash through five months after they've finished their living next door to each other and Loretta and David's now also have a slightly different project to manage I don't regret not selling it's an investment for the future and I think that it can still be that it's just a case of waiting a bit longer we're staying put for a while because of having a baby it's made me even more appreciate what we've done it just means that we get to reap the benefits of our work rather than somebody else for us you know our first project ever our one of the most difficult times it's really quite amazing that we've got through it to be honest I would definitely do a development again I'm not sure straight away and I don't think our finances could handle that anyway or nerves but don't let me manage it when you're developing in this market it's imperative that you have a 20 percent profit margin built in skill budgets your schedule needs to either be really fast so you get in and out of a falling market or take a much longer term view so you can ride through any uncertainties next week's developers set out to secure their future and end up digging a big hole for themselves you've got a pond down here in the basement there is no foundation we're stuffed that's our profit down the drain [Music] [Music] you [Music] you
