What Are Financial Viability Assessments?

For anybody pursuing any property development, having an understanding of whether this investment will serve you well enough on your return to warrant a follow-up is absolutely paramount. What exactly is a Financial Viability Assessment? How will it safeguard your investment, and how will it better your chances of success with your project? These are precisely the questions we hear day in and day out at Blackacre Surveyors, answered diligently and with knowledge of experience by our expert team.

Understanding Financial Viability Assessment

A financial viability assessment is a thorough financial review; the ultimate evaluation relates to whether your project for property development will produce enough returns to merit the investment. The House-Building Finance site also explains: an FVA is a detailed financial assessment of whether your proposed property development will make enough return to repay the cost. Our assessments at Blackacre Surveyors leave no stone unturned. We cover everything from construction costs and potential income to trends and finance.
In the end, we want to ensure that it is or will be valuable – valuable enough for you to survive, valuable enough for your investors to meet their obligations to their investors, valuable enough to not even have to raise the issue of whether you might be worth saving.

Key Components of a Financial Viability Assessment

A Blackacre Financial Viability Assessment covers several core areas:

Costs Analysis: We identify and cost up all the expenditures that we expect at the outset, including land acquisition, construction, material, labour, and planning obligations, such as affordable housing contributions.

Revenue Forecast: We estimate the income potential of your development.

Market Analysis: We will look at what has been selling or renting in your local market to provide you with an upfront projection as to whether your development will command a profitable rent or selling price.

Profit Margin: We determine the expected profitability of your project so your investment reaches considerable returns.

Why Are Assessments Crucial?

Informed Decision-Making for Developers

If you’re unsure the project will make any money once launched, the last thing you need is a pretty piece of paper, but instead an assessment of viability. Otherwise, all you risk is not attracting sufficient finance for feasibility, let alone at launch to take that idea all the way. If you don’t cover these aspects and, as a result, the money doesn’t complete the operation, you will find that you can’t take the steps you need to take to make it work. If any of that resonates with you, then do call us at Blackacre Surveyors, so you can also feel as sure as you can about the financial side of things.

Securing Investment and Financing

Investors and lenders might be willing to part with their capital only when given the assurance that your project is financially robust. FVAs from Blackacre Surveyors will give you that assurance and help to entice the finance you need to put your development into action. A robust FVA from Blackacre Surveyors could be the start of bringing your development to life.

Meeting Planning Obligations

An FVA can be a condition of planning permission imposed by the local authority to make sure that development will satisfy community obligations like affordable housing or infrastructure improvements. Blackacre Surveyors can confirm that your scheme will be viable, both financially and in relation to meeting planning obligations. We will make sure that unexpected costs or other surprises do not scupper your scheme.

Mitigating Financial Risks

While you and your team handle the day-to-day demands of your program, we at Blackacre Surveyors act as a detective who searches for problems that haven’t happened yet – problems such as swings in construction costs, delays, changes in projected demand, and so on. By identifying risks early, we equip you with the advanced warning necessary to adjust strategy, secure additional funding, or change course, ensuring a smoother development process.

When is Viability Assessments Needed?

While FVAs are normally a requirement during the planning application stage, these documents can help your project at different times in the development process:

Prior to buying the land, an FVA can help determine whether to purchase a piece of property.

To schedule the project: Are you assigning the right amount of money and manpower to the job? During the conceptual phase: Creatively and critically analysing a client brief in order to develop new ideas and concepts. Are the materials, design, and size of the building consistent with a financially sustainable outcome?…

Across all stages: A thorough FVA can secure construction financing by verifying the financial feasibility of the project. At the pre-consulting stage, An FVA examines whether the project functions properly. At the marketing stage, Superficial FVAs might attract visitors, but a comprehensive FVA is required to encourage them to stay. At the financing stage: A thorough FVA can secure construction financing by verifying the financial feasibility of the project.

Conclusion

From its inception, a Financial Viability Assessment at Blackacre Surveyors is more than a mechanism to assess viability against financial criteria: it is your route map. Through our holistic examination, we can help you avoid costly mistakes, meet your responsibilities as a developer under the National Planning Policy Framework, and ensure the eventually completed development scheme delivers the returns it should. Whether you are a developer or investor looking to commence building works on a site or simply looking to make a smart investment, a robust understanding of the financial feasibility of your proposal is key.

Is Blackacre Surveyors right for your next property development? Simply contact us at info@blackacresurveyors.com or give us a call at 0203 476 956 for our expert advice.

Key Role of Measured Building Surveys in Renovations

If you’re renovating, it’s probably the first set of sketches of new layouts that come to mind, coupled with your selection of fixtures and fittings and what the whole dream might look like when it’s done. Whatever project you have in mind, what will have set you up for a positive outcome long before the first carefully measured nail is hammered home, is the survey you undertook.

Accurate Data for Informed Decision Making

Measured Building Surveys provides a detailed, accurate plan of a building’s current layout and dimensions. This information is vital for planning any work undertaken by architects, contractors, or designers. When you don’t know precisely how your property is laid out, making informed decisions about renovation is difficult. Your existing walls, doorways, windows, and floor levels will be measured precisely. It avoids the risk of ordering materials that won’t fit and finding out at the last minute that your space won’t accommodate your planned layout.

Efficient Space Planning

Every property renovation ensures all available space is utilised, and the measured building survey guarantees that architects and designers have an accurate grasp of available square footage. Knowing exactly what and where the spaces are leaves little room for wasted spaces in the redesign, so you end up with more functional spaces that better suit requirements specifically for your property. Whether you are looking to knock down walls, build extensions, or rearrange spaces in an existing format, there’s no need for guesswork; the survey profoundly helps to improve any plans based on the current situation of the property, its size, and shape.

Compliance with Building Regulations

Every renovation must comply with local building codes and regulations, and a measured building survey helps to align the layout of your property with these regulations – so that the plans you submit to the local building authorities are as accurate and up-to-date as possible. Whether your budget is small, medium, or practically unlimited, a measured survey will prove its worth – and could even save you money by streamlining the planning and approval process. While compliance or regulated properties, such as conservation areas, often result in stringent regulations, even a relatively simple renovation needs to consider specifics, such as the dimensions of a room, the exact length of an entranceway, or the position of a window that the authorities would require for their building records.

Minimising Renovation Costs and Delays

Unforeseen delays and budget overruns are the most significant risks of a renovation, and without accurate data, serious problems can sometimes arise late in the process. For example, suppose it turns out that a fundamental part of the building’s structure is in the wrong place. In that case, it can lead to expensive modifications in the project long after the original work is underway. Insisting on a thorough, measured building survey at the start of the project can anticipate many of these problems and sort them out before you waste any time and money.

Conclusion

Measured building surveys are the all-important bedrock of a successful residential renovation. They provide the detail and precision that support decisions, preventing costly mistakes and ensuring everything is being renovated accurately and up-to-date. Whether modernising your modern home or renovating an older property, the nominal cost of commissioning a professionally measured building survey is insignificant compared with the potential cost savings it may provide.

Whenever you next contemplate a renovation, invest in a measured building survey from us at Blackacre Surveyors and be assured of the most accurate, efficient, and trouble-free outcome.

Contact us today at info@blackacresurveyors.com or 0203 476 9561 to book your measured building survey and ensure your redevelopment project starts on the right foot.