063 - The challenges of developing your first supported living property with Ruth Hunter

In this episode Ruth Hunter shares her experience of developing her first supported living property. She talks about the real challenges that exist for property investors when developing property for supported living and explains how she has overcome these to create a home for 6 people who have expereinced or are at risk of homelessness. Ruth started her love of property and design back at University qualifying as an Interior Architect. However, her path led her into the events arena and within a few years she was owner of a national award winning wedding and event planning company managing large 6 figure sum events. Over the last 5 years Ruth has developed her passion for property looking to move away from the events space and with her company being unable to operate due to Covid and her husband Paul, working in the hospitality space, she realised that needed to take big action and they sold their family home to invest their life savings into property. Ruth has developed HMO’s focusing on mental health and wellbeing, using biophilic design to enhance the interiors as well as being the first landlord to provide a tenant support service to the private sector offering her tenants unlimited counselling sessions, support and advice to her tenants. This want to provide more than just a cash flowing asset led her in to looking into providing housing for vulnerable people. Thanks to a personal connection within a charity who house chaotic vulnerable, Ruth has been able to work closely with them to help develop a 6 bed property to suit their needs specifically. Due to the nature of the project she was able to raise the funds with a SSAS pension trustee who shared her values and ethos and together they have been able to bring this project to life with the view of creating more homes with other charities as well as now working with specialists to provide modern accessible housing for wheelchair users. www.veredusproperty.com [email protected] Instagram and Facebook @veredusproperty Lisa Brown became a property developer after her nursing career. She then discovered the need for supported living property and has been exploring the challenges and solutions, to create more homes for those with support needs, ever since. Lisa has some limited availability for consultancy calls. If you would like to talk through anything discussed in the podcast, to explore how to work with supported living providers in your property business or if you are a supported living provider looking to understand property then please email [email protected] Join the conversation about supported living by joining Lisa’s free Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/supportedlivingproperty/ If you wish to find our more about Lisa and how to connect with her on social media please go to: https://linktr.ee/Lisa_Brown To find the video versions of these episodes please go to: https://www.youtube.com/c/LisaBrownProperty Thank you for listening, please do leave a review and subscribe to keep up to date with future episodes.