Property Investors Awards – Property Development of the Year

From dealing with a global pandemic to overcoming unexpected challenges along the way, George Ball’s property journey is one of perseverance and determination.

Through his hard work, he has now won Property Development of the Year at the Property Investors Awards.

How George’s property career started

George first entered the property market when he bought his first house at just 21, describing it as a steep learning curve.

He admits: “I made every single mistake possible, but I thought it would be a good investment.”

He says: “I bought a small one-bed house in Surrey, and it was empty for nine months. I was told it was a good investment and didn’t do much with it. I finally got around to renovating it and realised I should get a tenant in there as that’s how you make money.”

At first, George wasn’t heavily involved in property, but as his business grew, his interest in it did too. He explains that he went full-time in property in 2019 after coming back from working abroad in the Middle East.

He explains: “I came back from working abroad, primarily in Dubai and decided I wanted to become a full-time property developer because I thought I could make billions of pounds!”

George spent about 18 months learning the trade and building up more capital before going full-time, while still working in the background.

He says: “I had very limited knowledge, just a few HMOs and a handful of buy-to-lets, but I decided to go for it and embark on a new career.”

Fast forward six years, and George now has various property businesses, including his own property brand, George Ball Property, as well as Openvu, a land and development business. He also runs Nimble Property, which mainly focuses on HMOs and specialised supporting housing.

George’s property development project had its challenges

George’s award-winning property development project came with its own challenges.

He explains that when people hear he has won Development Project of the Year, they assume he’s building skyscrapers or massive housing estates, but the reality is very different.

Back in 2018, while walking, George came across a piece of land in Epsom, Surrey.

He says: “In Surrey, there are a lot of houses with huge back gardens, which is great. This is what we call ‘garden grabs’ or land assembly.”

He adds: “One of my core strategies over the years has been looking for gardens we can buy, but multiple gardens. If we speak to two, three or even four neighbours, we can create something valuable. A single garden on its own has no real value, but by combining three or more, we can build two or three houses.”

George explains: “In Epsom, from the rear elevation to the back of the house, the gardens are about 60 meters long.

“But the problem is, these gardens are landlocked. There’s lots of great space at the back, but you can’t access it, either by vehicle or on foot, without knocking down a house.”

He adds that one way to create access is by buying and demolishing a house, but this eats into profits, as it requires building more units to make the deal viable.

Instead, his team looks for sites with at least five metres of width for vehicle access,  enough space for two cars to pass comfortably.

George says: “We always ask, can we get to that land another way? Can we knock down a house, or is there an opportunity to knock down a garage or perhaps a single-storey extension.”

Great potential for a development project

This was exactly the case with his Epsom project.

He says: “Back in 2018, while out walking, I spotted a detached garage.

“I thought, if we knock that garage down, we could get access to the land at the back. At first, I believed we could get one dwelling on there, but by bringing multiple gardens together, we realised we could do even more.”

After writing letters to the landowners, George decided to take a chance and visit them personally. He said the reaction from the landowners was a surprise.

He explains: “Usually, the reaction is people don’t want to answer the door. But after I introduced myself, the landowners invited me in for a cup of tea and were really interested.”

After explaining his vision for the development project, George told the landowners it had great potential. He said that, alongside the neighbour’s garden, they could build a sustainable site that would meet the needs of the local community.

However, George explained that one of the landowners was honest with him and said he was already in discussions with another developer.

George explains: “The landowner told me he was in advanced discussions, but nothing was signed yet, and they had verbally agreed on a price

“I told him there was no harm in having a chat with me, and I’d go away, come back in two weeks, and do some due diligence, look at the site constraints, and see what we could get in terms of massing. The more houses we could fit on the site, the more, in theory, we could offer in land value to him and his neighbour.”

George explains that the other neighbour’s garden was vital for the project as without it, there would be no deal. However, the landowner told him the other neighbour was on board with the other developer.

All was not lost

After doing their homework on the site, George and his team came back with a bespoke presentation for both landowners, showing a development of three houses.

George says: “Whilst the landowners enjoyed the presentation, the other developer had offered a considerably higher price, which didn’t seem right.

“I told the landowners that they should take a closer look at the other developer’s offer. All of us developers deal with similar profit margins. I asked what the other developer was saying he could get on the site, and they told me he said he could get five houses on there.

“I told them that it probably wouldn’t be possible and would be an overdevelopment, but if that’s what they wanted to go with, I advised them to be careful. Once you enter into a contract with someone, it’s a two-year commitment, and you can’t get out of it.”

George says all was not lost. While the landowners decided to go with the other developer, his team kept the development in their system and continued to follow up with phone calls and letters every six months.

“The moral of the story here is perseverance,” George says.

“People say no when it doesn’t work for them at that moment, but circumstances change.”

Receiving a call from the landowners

Eighteen months later, George received a call from one of the landowners.

He explains: “One of the landowners, Matthew rang me and said, ‘Everything you predicted has happened. The other developer kept lowering their offer, and we don’t want to deal with them anymore.’”

The landowners told George they had secured planning permission for the three-house scheme he had originally proposed. With the developer’s contract ending the following month, they asked if he was still interested in buying.

However, there was a problem, they no longer wanted to sell the gardens, just the houses.

George says: “These houses were quite expensive, around £750,000 in 2019, and the landowners told me they would sell the houses but also wanted a decent premium on top, circa £100,000.

“They both wanted around £850,000, and these houses were originally worth £750,000, but if I bought the houses, I would get the development at the back.”

However, George explains, just buying a house isn’t as easy as it sounds.

He says: “There are entry and exit costs, stamp duty, borrowing costs, it doesn’t make commercial sense for small and medium enterprise (SME) developers to buy houses just for the land at the back.

With this project, as the planning permission was only for three houses, buying a dwelling didn’t make financial sense.

George says he told the landowners that the best way was to sell the land at the back first, then the house later on, as it was more profitable. However, the landowners simply didn’t want the hassle and wanted to retire.

Lightbulb went off

George was stuck on what to do as no other SME developer would take on the deal, but a light bulb went off on a creative way this could work.

He explains: “I suggested a sub-sale. I told them, ‘If you want £850,000 for each house, I’ll buy them, but I need 12 months to sell them. I’ll exchange on a small amount, about £5,000 per house, and you’ll need to give me full access for buyers to view the properties.’”

There was another key condition.

He adds: “They had to put up a permanent fence so that when buyers came to view the houses, they wouldn’t see the large back garden they could have had. Instead, they’d only see the private garden included with the house.”

George says the problem was that they didn’t know the value of the houses with a reduced title. Then, they had another challenge to deal with, a global pandemic!

George explains: “We just didn’t know the values of the houses, as we agreed to buy them at £850,000, but hopefully, we could sell the house with the reduced title at a number.”

Dealing with a global pandemic

After speaking with lots of agents, George found that while many knew the market was strong, they were uncertain how a family home with a reduced-sized back garden would perform.

The big unknown was: how much is a garden worth to someone? During the pandemic, people wanted outdoor space.

George says: “Agents were uncertain about what the market was like, where somebody was buying a five-bedroom house with a small garden, what value does that garden have?

“We assumed we would sell the houses at £600,000, and we agreed on the deal with the landowners. They said, ‘Okay, but just so you are aware, if you don’t manage to sell the houses within 12 months, legally, I’m obligated to complete at £850,000.’”

The pressure was on for George and his team to find a buyer within 12 months. After exchanging contracts, advertising, and getting viewings, the pandemic was in full effect.

George explains: “At this point during the pandemic, people were buying houses really quickly. There was all this pent-up demand, as people wanted to move, and we had around 40 viewings on the first weekend.

“During viewings, group viewings weren’t allowed, only one at a time. Then we had another problem, because the landowners were both quite elderly, they were most at risk from Covid.

“We had to arrange for them to leave the house for the day while we managed back-to-back viewings from 9am to 7pm. We took them to a garden centre for lunch, covering their expenses, and organised days out, giving them money so they could take their grandchildren to the cinema and bowling.”

Despite all the challenges, George and his team managed to sell the houses during the first weekend and for a higher price than expected. One of the houses was sold for £660,000, and the other for £665,000.

George explains: “This was great news, as we made £120,000 equity that we weren’t expecting.

“However, we had to put the buyers’ minds at rest, as they had questions about the development at the back of their houses.”

Another problem was that the landowners didn’t realise how quickly their houses would sell.

George and his team worked hard to alleviate their fears and offered to help the landowners find somewhere to rent, as they didn’t have enough time to buy in under 10 weeks.

The build was the easy part

George adds that the build was the easy part of the development project as they built the three houses, in 12 months, but selling them was the tricky part.

George says: “When we finished building the houses in March 2024, it was a very difficult time for the market because of finance, interest rates, and just before the election, there was a lot of uncertainty as people were apprehensive over what would happen with stamp duty.

“We found with these houses we were building, the end user was different to what we thought.

“The houses we were building were three-bedroom houses, very modern, in a nice part of Surrey, and we were advertising them at £700,000, and the people that were coming to the viewings were first-time buyers.

“Most of them were getting help with the bank of mum and dad, but with the uncertainty over stamp duty, what will happen if the Labour government comes in, as this was back in March 2024, we started to panic as we got so used to selling houses during the pandemic, and houses were just flying off the shelf really quickly.”

George explains that he and his team had to think strategically.

George says: “We had to think how we would do our opening day, how we would market the development.

“One of the largest costs people overlook is time, as time is your biggest cost in any development, especially when you have borrowing costs like we had.

“Every month these houses don’t sell, it’s costing us hugely.”

The hard work paid off as George managed to sell all three houses at an average of £700,000, and the gross development value (GDV) of the site was £2.1 million.

Great to be recognised

George says his property journey with this project shows that there is always a solution.

George explains: “There is always a solution to everything, and you just need to keep cool, calm, and collected, as panicking about a situation is not going to help.”

Winning Property Development of the Year at the Property Investors Awards was the cherry on top of the cake for George and his team.

He explains: “It feels great to be recognised for all the hard work, and it opens a lot of doors.

“I saw people I looked up to winning these awards, and I said to myself, one day, I’m going to win that. If you put your mind to it, you can achieve it.”

George recommends that property investors apply for the awards.

George says: “If you’ve got something that you think is a good opportunity, put it forward. While the application process may be long, it’s a great way for any property investor to get the seal of approval from the judges.”

Always expect the unexpected

George’s one piece of advice to aspiring property investors is: “Always expect the unexpected.”

He explains: “If you are comfortable with the fact that things are going to go wrong, you will be okay. It’s inevitable, something will go wrong, no matter how experienced you are.

“It’s just about looking at challenges at the end of the project, reflecting on what went well, and learning from it.”