Building for the future

Business Development Manager for Scotland, Peter McDermid, explains how Scotland must address it’s demand for housing:

It’s undeniable that demand for housing in Scotland is at an all time high. Yet smaller developers, having been turned away by the restrictive criteria of high street banks, continue to struggle to access finance for their schemes. At LendInvest we’re trying hard to redress the balance, lending property finance to small-scale investors and developers nationwide.

Aside from the finance, our clients tell us that choosing the right place to build is one of the single most important decisions to be made in the development process. The regeneration we’re seeing in Scotland at the moment is providing the perfect opportunity for property developers to consider this as a key factor in choosing where to invest. With finance now available to cover developers throughout their development, funding can be secured from the earliest stages of a project.

The launch of new finance options is also further facilitating developers as they reach practical completion of their projects allowing them added flexibility and time to move onto new projects while their existing ones sell, keeping the market moving. We recently assisted a developer in Glasgow, providing development exit finance to him to allow him to do just that.

Investment in major cities all around the country is also great news for the commuter towns that surround them, many of which make ideal locations for new residential sites. This is why we recently expanded our Property Development Academy to Edinburgh to give budding developers all over the UK access to the skills they need to monopolise on this opportunity.

Knowing your area and demographic in the long term are the foundations for your end sale – it is no longer enough to just think in the present.

This article was first published in Scotland’s Business Insider magazine.