Episode Details

Steve Carnes is a property developer with over 30 years’ experience in the industry, having worked at Knight Frank and Savills, before moving into property development full-time. Since then, he’s delivered north of £1 billion in GDV across city centre conversions, tower buildings and large-scale mixed-use schemes.

In this episode, Steve pulls back the curtain on what large-scale development actually involves, from navigating complex planning processes and the challenges of developing in city centres, to how his materials increased by £2million overnight, why it can genuinely be easier to borrow £50 million than £5 million, his unfiltered take on Manchester versus London, and how he structures deals to protect against the risks most developers don’t see coming.

If you’ve ever wondered what separates developers working on 1-2bed strategies from those taking on major tower and mixed-use developments, this is the episode to listen to.

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Contact Steve:
https://www.meadwaydevelopments.co.uk/
https://instagram.com/meadwaydevelopments/
*Steve has since confirmed that the Chester development was renamed HQ Chester


00:00 Coming up
00:21 What does it take to be a successful property developer? 
01:46 Steve’s property journey 
08:05 Property Developer Show
08:40 Commercial Property Expo
09:20 What risk really looks like in large scale development
14:03 Over £1billion GDV
14:25  Favourite scheme to date  
17:24 Planning process
20:33 Planning corruption  : the red line that shouldn’t exist
26:04 How to keep moving forwards in a difficult market 
28:47 AI in property development
32:41 Knight Frank, Savills and building the northern market
36:51 TerraQuest
37:18 Property Developer Buying Club
38:03 Making the transition from agent to developer
41:11 How Steve structures and funds deals
50:38 Going from £100k to £1million
52:16 How to follow Steve & reach out

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