Honest Property Investment with Natasha Collins

Are you actually building wealth through property, or are you just creating more work for yourself?

This week on the Honest Property Investment Podcast, I'm joined by Scott Williams, founder of the Property Developer Show and Commercial Property Expo, to talk about building businesses, investing in property and knowing when it's time to change direction.

Scott started his property career as an apprentice in 2015, bought his first property at 23, built and exited a finance brokerage and has since developed a successful events business.

But his journey hasn't been straightforward.

He's tried different business models, walked away from opportunities that weren't right, sold much of his residential property portfolio and learned that sometimes the best way to grow is to stop spreading yourself so thinly.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Why Scott decided to sell much of his residential portfolio rather than continue accumulating buy-to-lets.

• How property investment helped provide the capital to build his businesses.

• The importance of recognising sunk costs and knowing when to walk away.

• Why being busy doesn't necessarily mean you're building a successful business.

• How Scott tested different businesses before finding the right opportunity.

• Why specialising in one area can be more valuable than pursuing multiple property strategies.

• The importance of building relationships and having people you can turn to for advice.

• How the Property Developer Show evolved into the Commercial Property Expo.

• Why commercial property is attracting interest from investors.

It's an interesting conversation about property, entrepreneurship and the decisions we make about where to put our time and money.

Come and meet Team NCRE at the Commercial Property Expo!

The Commercial Property Expo takes place on 4th November 2026 in Manchester, from 10am to 3pm.

There will be exhibitors, speakers and opportunities to meet other commercial property investors and professionals.

My team from NCRE will be there, so please come and say hello!

Register for your free ticket here:
https://portal.commercialpropertyexpo.co.uk/attendee_register.php

Find out more about Scott:

Property Developer Show: https://www.propertydevelopershow.co.uk

Instagram: @scottluiswilliams | @propertydevelopershow | @commercialpropertyexpo

If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe to the Honest Property Investment Podcast and share it with another property investor.

Are small businesses really being squeezed out of commercial property? And are only the biggest occupiers going to survive?

That was the argument somebody made to me on Substack this week — but it simply isn't what we're seeing across the commercial properties we manage.

In this episode, I'm sharing what's actually happening on the ground: the types of commercial tenants we're seeing thrive right now, the businesses I'm becoming increasingly cautious about, and what I look for before agreeing to a new tenant.

We're seeing particularly strong demand from service-led businesses — including beauty, healthcare, counselling, care services, food-to-go and professional services — alongside continued demand for small workshops, storage and flexible business space.

But there are other sectors where I'm asking considerably more questions before handing over the keys.

I cover:

• The commercial tenants we're seeing perform well right now

• Why service-led businesses are proving resilient

• Why I love a boring 500 sq ft workshop or storage unit

• The tenant types I'm currently more wary of

• Why a successful business isn't necessarily a good tenant for your property

• What recent tenant failures across our own portfolio have looked like

• The due diligence we carry out on prospective tenants

• Why I want to see tenants thinking about business rates, utilities, grants and operating costs before they move in

• Why I'm increasingly interested in the person behind the business, not just the sector they're operating in

The big takeaway?

Commercial property isn't dying. Occupational demand is changing.

As investors and landlords, our job isn't simply to find somebody willing to sign a lease.

It's to understand who needs our space, why they need it and whether they've built a business capable of paying the rent for years to come.

I’m not an off-market deal girlie.

There, I said it.

There’s a mythology in property investment that off-market means exclusive, less competition, cheaper and therefore a better deal.

But in commercial property, I don’t think those things automatically follow at all.

In this episode, I’m talking about why I actively like dealing with agents, why having a property properly exposed to the market can actually help with price discovery, and why some of the hardest deals I’ve tried to negotiate have been directly with sellers who have simply decided what they think their property is worth.

I also explain how we actually search for commercial property for our acquisition clients — starting with a clear strategy, understanding what’s on the market, analysing the right opportunities, making evidence-based offers and, importantly, building genuine relationships with the agents operating in that market.

Because those relationships are often what eventually lead to opportunities coming to you before they reach the wider market.

My point isn’t that you should never buy off-market.

It’s that being off-market isn't what makes something a good investment.

The numbers, the risk, the lease, the covenant, the location, the capex and the opportunity still have to stack up.

If you’d like NCRE to help you find and acquire your next commercial property, you can book a call with the team HERE

What does success in commercial property actually look like?

We hear a lot about achieving the highest ROCE, buying at double-digit yields, recycling every penny of capital and building bigger and bigger portfolios.

But I’m not convinced that’s the dream.

In this episode, I want to sell you a slightly different version of commercial property success.

For me, the dream is owning an estate that pays you consistently, has enough financial resilience to deal with the problems that inevitably arise, and doesn’t require you to run it day-to-day.

You have good professionals around you who do the legwork. They keep up with changes in their areas of expertise, put those changes into practice, manage the day-to-day and introduce you to the people you need to know.

Your role changes.

You become the Estate Owner.

You make the overarching decisions about capital, acquisitions, disposals, debt, risk and strategy — while your professional team executes. And importantly, you can still get involved in the parts of commercial property you genuinely enjoy. The difference is that your involvement becomes a choice rather than an obligation.

I also talk about why we don't tend to hear much from investors who have already achieved this. Perhaps the people quietly receiving their income while somebody else manages the day-to-day simply aren't spending their evenings at property networking events telling everyone about their latest ROCE.

Because ultimately, I think there's a much more interesting measure of commercial property success:

Is your estate serving you, or are you serving the estate?

That’s the commercial property dream I want to sell you.

Everyone wants a higher yield from their commercial property investment... but are you prepared for what comes with it?

In this episode, I’m talking about what different yield levels can actually mean in practice. I cover the risks you’re likely to encounter with 10%+ yielding properties, why 8–10% can offer an interesting balance between cash flow and asset management opportunities, and what you’re really buying when you move below 8%.

I also talk about competition, realistic timescales for finding these deals and why a higher yield isn’t simply a higher return — there’s usually a reason the market is pricing the property that way.

If you have a target yield in mind for your next commercial property investment, this episode will help you understand what you may need to accept to achieve it.

"I want an 8% yield." I hear a version of this from almost every investor I talk to, and there's nothing wrong with having a target return, but wanting an 8% yield doesn't mean the market owes you one. In this episode I break down the relationship between the return you actually want, the yield the market is currently pricing, and the risk you need to take to bridge the gap between the two, including what prime yield guides are (and aren't) telling you, and the one question you should ask every time someone sends you a deal "yielding 9%."

In this episode:

• Why wanting an 8% yield doesn't mean the market owes you one

• What return do YOU actually want and why yield and return aren't the same word

• Working backwards from your required return to the right risk profile

• What a prime yield guide is actually telling you (and what it isn't)

• Prime yield as the market's risk benchmark breaking down where the extra 2.5% comes from

• Why "is 8% a good yield?" is the wrong question — two properties, same yield, opposite investments

• What prime yield guides ARE useful for

• Why prime yield isn't your required return

• Where the 5-Minute Deal Check fits into all of this

Links:

• Run the 5-Minute Deal Check yourself → https://ncrealestate.co.uk/5-minute-deal-check/

If you think the reason you can't find a decent commercial property deal is the market, it isn't — it's that you're checking a couple of portals every few days instead of running an actual funnel. In this episode I show you exactly what my funnel looks like end to end, using a real client search that's been running since Thursday: 48 leads in, filtered right down to 2 genuine opportunities. Then I run both of those real, live deals through my 5-Minute Deal Check on air, so you can hear exactly how a fast filter tells you where to spend your actual time — and where not to.

In this episode:

• Why "the market" isn't your actual problem

• What a real funnel looks like — alerts, one spreadsheet, a hard filter

• The numbers: 48 leads in since Thursday, only 2 good enough to shortlist

• Live case study 1 — a mixed-use freehold that looks fine on paper

• Live case study 2 — the deal that comes down to one question for the agent

• What both of these actually prove about filtering fast

• Where to run this same check yourself

Links:

• Run the 5-Minute Deal Check yourself → https://ncrealestate.co.uk/5-minute-deal-check/

Get the 5-Minute Deal Check → https://ncrealestate.co.uk/5-minute-deal-check/

(£49 + VAT founding price, rising to £249 + VAT once the first 100 are sold)

Every deal that lands on my desk gets the same first test before anything else happens: rough numbers, real risks, a straight verdict. In this episode I walk through exactly how I do that — and introduce the tool I've built so you can run the same check yourself in about five minutes. I also take a property that's live on the market right now and run it through the test in real time, so you can hear exactly what it catches that a quick skim of the brochure wouldn't.

Welcome to the second edition of my monthly NC Real Estate Economic Dashboard, where I take the latest economic data and explain what it means for commercial property investors.

Rather than reacting to headlines, I use a simple dashboard to monitor the key indicators that influence commercial property and decide whether I need to change the way I analyse investment opportunities.

This month, I discuss:

• Why 10-year gilt yields have edged back up and what that could mean for commercial property values
• Why the Bank of England base rate has remained unchanged whilst commercial mortgage pricing has started to soften
• How the latest inflation figures are influencing my view of tenant affordability
• What the latest RICS UK Commercial Property Monitor tells us about occupier demand
• Why vacancy continues to rise even though tenant demand is beginning to improve
• What the latest investment enquiries reveal about buyer confidence
• Why I'm continuing to underwrite deals using a 9-month void period and 6 months' rent free
• The biggest risks and opportunities I'm seeing in today's commercial property market

I also explain the assumptions I'm making in my own deal analysis and why, despite some encouraging signs, I'm not changing my underwriting just yet.

The purpose of this dashboard isn't to predict the future. It's to understand the current market, ask better questions and make more informed commercial property investment decisions.

NC Real Estate helps commercial property investors build high-performing, income-generating portfolios that have the potential to increase their value — without the overwhelm.

In this episode of the Honest Property Investment Podcast, I sit down with Caryn Yuen and Antoine Dufresne from The Investables. Between them, they've invested in more than 50 property projects, giving them a unique perspective on what separates opportunities worth backing from those they pass on.

Rather than focusing on how to raise private finance, this conversation explores what experienced private investors actually look for before they commit their own money.

In this episode, we discuss:

• What first attracted Caryn and Antoine to private property investing.
• The first things they assess when reviewing a new opportunity.
• The due diligence they carry out before investing.
• The biggest red flags that make them walk away.
• Why the people behind a project matter just as much as the numbers.
• The common mistakes developers make when approaching private investors.
• What investors expect after they've invested, from communication to reporting.
• How understanding an investor's mindset can help you become a better property investor.

Whether you're looking to raise private finance one day or simply improve the way you assess commercial property opportunities, this episode offers practical insights into evaluating risk and recognising what makes a project truly investable.

Connect with Caryn & Antoine

Website: https://www.theinvestables.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carynyuen/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.investables/