By Sue Sims
Friday 2nd June was an unusual day, as it was the day that Sue Sims and Adam Lawrence took back the mantle of hosting PIP Birmigham. This was a step back to when they set up Partners in Property more than 5 years ago.
Our usual host Raj Sharma was at a family wedding but he’ll be back next month as usual sharing hosting duties with Sue Sims.
The meeting started as every PIP meeting begins with introductions around the room and hopefully members were able to find someone they wanted to talk to in the coffee break or over lunch.
The first speaker of the day was Adam Vickers with his very individual take on joint ventures. His view is that JVs are all about the people and the relationships with the legals definitely taking second place.
His advice is that you should only consider a JV with someone who you’d be happy to leave your children with for a week. Your children are the thing you hold dearest to your heart and this should give you more certainty about signing a JV with that person.
His second point is that you only JV with people who are like valued.
Like minded is all well and good, but if your values don’t align it could create issues further down the line.
Once you have found your like valued JV partner, then you do your financial due diligence.
So many great pieces of advice in Adam’s presentation.
Second speaker of the day was Peter Vandevennin from the Mortgage Consultancy. It’s a really tough market at the moment. Lenders are pulling out of the market but will come back in. Rates are increasing and lending is getting harder.
But there was some optimism with a new lender coming to the market and they are less strict with their lending criteria.
After a short coffee break, there was a short presentation made to Jabu Nyirongo as a thank you for taking part in a challenge Angie Nicholls and Sue Sims set to all PIP members.
The rest of the morning before lunch was taken up with the expert finance panel made up of Tom Edmunds from CrowdProperty, Kirsty Rogers from Together Money and Peter Vandervennin from the Mortgage Consultancy.
Patsy Richardson, one of our long time PIP members, took full advantage of the expert panel and talked to them about a very complicated deal she’s trying to fund.
It is a mixed-use deal which is being sold as one lot, but can be split into several different units. The site includes two shops, each with a flat above, and an office which can be developed into a house. After various comments from the panel, it transpires the best way to finance the whole site will be using development finance. And the loan to have the facility to call down funds as and when it’s required and allowing to sell off different parts of the build as and when they are complete.
It was then time for lunch.
As usual the afternoon was taken up with our round tables, each hosted by one of the speakers of the day. Lots of opportnites for members to have one to one time with the speakers and ask more direct questions.
Next month we have Dan Cottam speaking and I’m looking forward to sharing hosting duties with Raj Sharma again.
