Month: November 2022

Nathan Booth has been Land Manager at CB Homes for the last three years. His role involves overseeing and maintaining the company’s land strategy, for both developments and for one-off plots to cater for our self-build clients.

How long have you worked at CB Homes?

I started working at CB Homes over ten years ago as an Assistant Site Manager and I worked my way up from there to my current position. It means I have a really in-depth knowledge of how the whole company works, as well as a very thorough understanding of the life cycle of each and every project we undertake.

What do you like most about your job as Land Manager?

I really enjoy the responsibility of my role. If I can’t find land, then literally nothing can happen! I actually enjoy that pressure. It’s incredibly rewarding to find a piece of land, get it through the minefield of the planning office and then start to build beautiful property. Years later, when I drive past that site I feel really proud to have been a part of creating the community that has developed there and knowing that people have built new lives there.

What does a typical day look like for you?

Every day I receive lots of enquiries through our website and via email so I have to go through those and respond to them. Potential clients may get in touch at any point with questions about projects. Usually, they are getting in touch to say they have land and want to find out about self-building or they may have a particular planning policy question. These can be quite straightforward queries or may need quite a bit of time spent to answer properly. My feedback will be with an email, a phone call or a Zoom call. To help us find land, we have a land website to target the online market, so I spend a lot of time responding to leads we receive on that too.

You never know when that first point of contact is going to lead to a new relationship with a client that may culminate in our delivering a new home for them. That might happen within a few months or it might take several years. Regardless of the timescale, it’s really important to engage with them from the very start of their self-build journey.

Once I have spent some time on admin, I may leave the office to go and meet some clients, do some site visits of current developments, or carry out planning or cost appraisals. Once a potential plot has been identified then I have to approach the agent or owner, look at feasibility studies, sketch schemes, land values and then start negotiations.

It’s important that I build relationships with local people, estate agents and land agents as they are my best source of finding out about possible plots. I also look at directly sourcing land via planning policies. There are such frequent rule changes, I have to keep on top of national and local policies and planning guidelines too. I have to make sure I’m fully up to date on local development plans, as land might not be available now, but may be in several years’ time. I always have to be looking really long term, so there is a pipeline of projects for CB Homes. I’m always on the lookout for what we call windfall sites, which are where there is land ready to go within settlement areas, whether it’s brownfield, commercial, or even large gardens.  

“Environmental concerns are more important than ever“

These days of course, environmental concerns are more important than ever, so right from the start of looking at any potential plot, I’m looking to see how we can further reduce our environmental impact. This means I’ll be looking to see where any existing natural features can be retained and integrated, such as surface water ponds or reedbeds that could be used for surface water drainage. I’ll also be looking at space and thinking how renewables, such as ground source heat pumps, can be included aesthetically so they can be effective but not spoil the lines of the buildings.

What’s your biggest challenge as Land Manager?

Finding land is certainly the hardest part. The ongoing scarcity of land is a real problem, fuelled by land banking where land is taken out of the market, often by large scale developers, which has a significant impact on availability for everyone else.

“Currently land is hard to find and the planning process is slow“

In addition to finding plots for our self-build clients, I also have a land finding role for CB Homes Developments where I’m looking for land suitable to build from 2-20 houses, so around .5 acres up to 5 acres.

As land is so hard to find for self-build projects, I’ve actually widened the scope of my role so I keep an eye out for single plots that are available that might match our clients’ prerequisites for a self-build. Where we can, we buy a plot, get planning approval for a self-build house and then offer it out to clients. They often have the option to make any tweaks they want to the design while it’s passing through the planning process. This makes sense at the moment especially, with the planning process being very slow. Planning used to take eight weeks, but now it can take eight months, so a big part of my job is managing client expectations about the timescales of a project.

Why do you think people like CB Homes’ houses?

Housing developers often get a bad reputation, which sadly is not always undeserved but we have a hard won reputation and track record to maintain. We are first and foremost a very local developer – where we build is where we live so the local community is very important.

CB Homes covers a large area in the North West, including North Shropshire, South Manchester, Wirral, Cheshire and the Welsh borders. As a bespoke developer, we specialise in small exclusive bespoke builds, with high specification, on good plot sizes. The houses are usually 4-5 bedroom executive homes, but the company also builds some small starter homes, which are usually 2-3 bedroom mews-style. Our schemes have to be financially viable of course but for us, it’s never about cramming in as many houses as possible as we’re not competing with the mass market.

We have a good reputation with Local Authorities as they know the quality of our schemes. We provide individual care and attention from day one, we care enormously about the homes we build and we want everyone to be able to recognise the quality of a CB Homes build, whether it’s a starter home on one of our small developments or one of our award-winning ‘grand design’ self-build homes.

Do you have land to sell? Get in touch today. Interested in building your own home? Talk to us about our complete self-build package.