Small Developments - Recommendations

[luvvit]

Hey guys

Have resi IP's in the back pocket now, and doing nicely. I was thinking about getting an edukashun on small development.

Ideally I'd like to buy/build a couple of townhouses in Sydney, and apart from the council nightmares and what not, I have very little knowledge of the processes, and wanted to know if anyone has good reading material to wade through to start me off on my quest for knowledge. Ive done a couple of searches and havn't found anything that helps.

I know there is probably 10,000 books on it, but I'd appreciate some thoughts on the best ones to start off with. Also I remember an old friend talking about companies that do JVs where they hold your hand through the entire process, from sourcing the land, to council approvals, building, etc etc etc, you get the experience without the first timer headaches and they get a slice of the pie.

Anyone know of such a company? Grossreal, you'd have a thing or two to say about that wouldnt you?

Luvvit.

 

[john]

Hi Luvvit

Surprisingly I have not found too many books on the subject - unlike general property investing. The best I have found are two books by Ron Forlee (one of which is called "Australian Residential Property Development", and a book by Bob and Luke Anderson called "Residential Real Estate Development - A Practical Guide for Beginners to Experts". I bought them recently so they are still in print. Google should pull them up. These books are practical. There are some others around but they can be poorly written and very light on with information.
And yep there are various companies that can go in with you but their costs I would think would tale away the cream of a dev. Property dev is not rocket science providing you educate yourself , you have reasonable RE equity behind you and a friendly banker. I can also recommend a software feasibility programme called "Feastudy" which will help you crunching the numbers. Google will find that too. Good luck

 

[FrankGrimes]

I have read those two books and they are both quite good (one was quite expensive though from memory). I also bought the DVDs from smartpropertydevelopment.com -> site seems a bit crappy but the content and presentation was good.