Property and Real Estate

Property Developing

Property developers are people or organisations who build, refurbish or simply redecorate a property. The aim is usually to then sell the property at a profit or to rent out the property once the development is finished.

So typically a developer might buy a property at a local property auction, refurbish and redecorate, possibly adding GCH (gas central heating) and DG (double glazing). It might include structural changes, a new kitchen and/or bathroom, re-plastering or new doors etc. Once the property is finished the developer would either put it on the market for sale or put it on the market as a rental property. For a developer the ideal would be to sell the property at a profit which gives them back the capital they had invested plus the profit. This then allows them to look for another development project to again make more profit. Putting the development up for sale also means that they don’t have the usual landlord headaches.

With the state of the current property market developers are now having to decide what to do with stock that has been newly developed or built. Where they would normally have been able to sell newly finished properties on a development even before the whole development had been finished, they are now finding it difficult to sell any even at a hefty discount. So some developers are now turning into landlords and renting out the finished properties in the hope that property prices will recover in the near future.