Business Hour
David Fearnhead meets businessman and property developer David Price, the man behind the revival of the historic Asturian House
Two things strike you almost immediately when meeting David Price. The first is his youth, but the second is his passion for property. His father is a purchasing director and his mother is a secretary, so he’s not quite sure where it comes from.
As an eight-year-old he was building houses out of matchsticks and selling them at school for 20p. “So I was earning a little money from it, even back then,” says David.
At 29 he’s recently completed the rebirth of an iconic building in Ribchester. Asturian House dates back to 1823, but it became a project nobody wanted to touch. “It was an eyesore, no developer would touch it because the council had refused planning on it,” says David.
The property had two restrictive covenants on it from a previous developer. One which allowed them a 50 per cent share of the profits and another which restricted its usage to offices.
“I managed to find it was the land director of one of the biggest companies in the UK, Persimmon Homes, who little David Price had to go and negotiate with to get rid of the clauses. I showed him the vision of what we were trying to achieve and instead of having to battle with him to try and remove the restrictions, we agreed an outcome, and in fact he’s now acting as a bit of a mentor.”
Not for the first time David had turned a potential problem into an opportunity.
His first foray into property came at 23. With a few thousand he’d saved up, and with loans, he purchased a terraced house for £67,000.
“Mum and dad didn’t want me to get into property. They just wanted me to get a normal job, as I’m very risk averse by nature. People think property is risky but if you think of it as you’re converting cash in to bricks and mortar, which holds the same value, in essence it’s not so much of a risk.”
Just a few years on from that first terrace house and he was managing a team of 85 contractors on a 10-month build that should have taken two years.
“Nobody whose been in the business for 30 years wants to be bossed around by a youngster, but when they see I know what I’m talking about, and the amount of passion behind it, they are okay. There’s also no leeway from our exacting standards. If every other contractor is adhering to our core values, then it creates a certain ethos on the site.”
A key to his success has been to seek wise counsel: “I’d pestered another mentor and investor for years until he said yes,” recalls David. “He’s incredibly astute and he’s very down to earth. Money is one thing, but who he’s helped shaped me into – I’ll be forever indebted to him.”
“I also went to Business Angels NW with the hope of raising £250,000 and we managed to raise double that. Fast forward a couple of years, we’re now investing quite a few million into the next project. We started small, but now we are doing bigger projects together. We’ve grown our building arm of the business to over £1m, and real estate side to over £2m. We’ll be looking to double that this year.”
The results are astounding. Asturian House has been converted into six stunning apartments each with their own unique character, blending the traditional with modern. In each apartment the level of detail brought by David’s exacting standards is above and beyond what most developers offer.
The Mayfair style front doors should have cost £1,300 each, but David was able to reverse engineer them back to their component parts and have a local firm build them at a third of the cost.
“A lot of what we’ve done with design doesn’t cost all that much more to do, it just takes time, thought and absolute passion, which the big boys haven’t got. They’ve got their set model to stick to and they’re more mass market, standard box shape developers, which we have no aspiration to ever be. We’re looking to grow to between three and five sizeable projects a year, which we’re on course to do.”
“Creating an incredible design and lifestyle, is such a passion and driving force, that I’d rather leave a bit of profit on the table, in order to develop a phenomenal product and most people won’t do that. You can earn more money again next year, but your brand and your product speaks for itself. We’re in it for the long haul.”
It’s a philosophy which saw all the Asturian House apartments sold within weeks, despite going on the market just before Christmas – traditionally the worst time of year to sell property.
David credits their location as being a key factor: “The Ribble Valley was voted one of the top 10 places to live in the UK by The Times. It’s a very relaxed lifestyle with incredible gastro pubs. There’s outdoor living and superb views, but at the same time Manchester is 40 minutes away. You can also be in the Lake District in half an hour.”
