We are increasingly finding that many of the new people we are dealing with professionally are a great deal younger than we are. Sadly I’m finding myself saying “Christ, I’ve children the same age as you”. It’s a reflection of age of course and a little frightening but I admire the drive and passion that so many have. There’s a certain degree of naivety as well on their part but that’s just lack of experience and that will come with time. It’s easy to ‘blame’ youth but over the past couple of weeks we have been proven to be ahead of experienced contractors, developers and investment funds who really should know better.

A building in Birmingham we said needed the best part of £200K spending on it back in November last year was bought by one of our funds and then in April they have withdrawn on the basis of their survey results telling us that the property was in worse state than they thought and it needs £200K spending on it. It was one of those situations where we had to bite our lip and simply question their internal procedures.

A existing tenanted apartment block in Barnsley was rejected by a facilitating care fund due to the front personal gate led onto a main road and would potentially put the future tenants at risk. The quick answer was to simply remove the gate or put a lock on it and point everyone to the side and rear of the building and therefore onto a quiet cul de sac road. It’s not rocket science! They took this onboard, said it was a great idea and are now proceeding to buy the building.

The list goes on. Experience does count and whilst we might not be right all the time our opinion is asked for regularly and with a challenging and changing market that experience is paying dividends.

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