Paul Mahoney: Hi, I’m Paul Mahoney, founder and managing director at Nova Financial Group. We’re a property and finance advisory company, and today I’m going to talk to you about due diligence on developers and investing off-plan.

Paul Mahoney: There’s been some recent negative media around failed developments and developers, specifically in the north or the northwest of England. And although those case studies are most certainly true, they touched on two or three different case studies of the hundreds of schemes that are currently underway. So it’s important to take these things in context and to make sure that they’re not over-sensationalized and tarnishing quite a strong property market, being the midlands and the northwest, and the northern powerhouse schemes as a whole, it’s all a very positive, positive thing.

Paul Mahoney: What is quite important though is due diligence on developers, especially when investing off-plan. Now, at Nova we make sure that our clients’ deposits are either held in escrow or a stakeholder, or they’re covered by a warranty or some sort of bond, which means that the investor’s money is safe. With the schemes that failed in the north, and where people lost money, the funds were being used to actually fund the development, which means that the investors are taking the vast majority of the risk, and when those developments didn’t work, it’s the investors that have lost their money. So that’s one example of the due diligence that we do here at Nova and getting a very clear understanding of where your deposits are going, but also the track records and how strong financially developers are, to give us as much confidence as possible when investing off-plan.

Paul Mahoney: Now, you might say, “Well, why invest off-plan?” Well a lot of our clients have done extremely well from doing so. We get access to the best properties within prime developments, in prime locations, the best prices and incentives, and therefore, position ourselves in the best possible way to do well not just over the bill period but over into the longterm in positioning ourselves in strong growing markets.

Paul Mahoney: So if you have any questions about that or would like to see how that can work for you, then please get in touch.