£4k
Starting investment
£20M+
Current portfolio value
8 sites
Active developments
Background
It started with a terraced house and £4,000.
In 2014, James started the way most property developers do — not with a business plan, but with a single property. A Victorian terraced house in Penrith, purchased at auction for £4,000. He renovated it over weekends, sold it six months later for £42,000, and reinvested every penny.
Over the next decade, that cycle repeated itself. Small terraces became semi-detached. Semis became small developments of four or five units. By 2022, the business had grown into something entirely different from where it started — a Lake District development company managing multiple schemes, a small team, investor relationships, and a growing pipeline of new sites.
"I never set out to build a development company. I just kept reinvesting. One day I looked up and realised I had eight sites running and six people depending on the business."
The portfolio had grown. The operations hadn't.
The challenge
Growth exposed the operational cracks.
At one or two sites, James could hold most of the business in his head. He tracked units on an Excel spreadsheet, buyer enquiries came in by phone or email, viewing notes were scribbled on a pad, and documents lived in a shared Google Drive folder that had grown too large to navigate.
By 2023, with eight active schemes running in parallel — ranging from a 3-unit conversion in Keswick to a 24-plot new build near Windermere — that approach was failing. Leads were slipping through. His sales manager had a different spreadsheet to the one his PA was updating. Two buyers had been offered the same unit on different sites. A solicitor package for one plot had gone to the wrong buyer.
Fragmented records
Spreadsheets, shared drives, email inboxes and WhatsApp threads — five places to find the same piece of information, each slightly different.
Lead leakage
Enquiries arrived via Rightmove, direct calls, referrals and email. No central tracking meant some buyers were followed up inconsistently — or not at all.
No visibility across sites
James couldn't get a clear picture of unit availability, reservations, pricing or pipeline across all eight developments at once.
Manual reporting
Every board update and investor report meant pulling figures from multiple sources — a half-day exercise every week that was still never fully accurate.
The team was spending as much time maintaining information as they were using it. The business needed a proper operating platform.
The decision
Finding Häuses.
James had looked at Salesforce and HubSpot, but both felt like they'd need significant configuration to understand what a development was, what a unit was, or how a property pipeline differed from a generic sales funnel.
A conversation with another developer in the North West led him to Häuses. The demo showed something immediately familiar: a workspace built around the way property development actually works. Developments at the top. Units within them. Leads connected to both. Tasks, documents and viewings all in the right place.
"The first thing I noticed was that I didn't have to explain what a development was. It already knew what I was dealing with."
The team migrated from their spreadsheets in a weekend. Within a week, they had all eight developments in Häuses, units loaded with pricing and availability, and the live pipeline pulled across from email and CRM notes.
In practice
How the team uses Häuses day to day.
James uses the development dashboard as the first thing he opens each morning. Eight scheme cards, each with real-time availability, reservation count, pipeline value, and next actions. In thirty seconds he has the picture he used to spend half a day compiling.
Unit and availability management
Every plot across all eight developments is in one place — with pricing, build stage, completion date and status visible instantly. The team updates records in real time, so availability is always accurate.
Lead pipeline and buyer CRM
All enquiries flow into Häuses regardless of source. Each lead is linked to a unit and development, with full contact history, buyer type, source attribution, and pipeline stage from enquiry to exchange.
Viewing workflows
The embeddable booking widget runs on their listings. Buyers choose timeslots, the team gets a Slack alert, and viewing records auto-create in the CRM. No more manual calendar coordination.
Document management
Brochures, floor plans, reservation forms and planning documents sit inside the right development and unit record. Legal packs are shared directly with solicitors from within the platform.
Tasks and team workflow
Every follow-up, document chase, viewing preparation task and solicitor reminder is assigned in Häuses. The team's open task board means nothing gets forgotten — even across eight simultaneous sites.
Results
What changed after six months on Häuses.
Six months in, the operational picture was measurably different. Not because the business had changed — the same eight sites, the same team, the same volume of enquiries — but because the information was clean, connected and visible.
34%
Faster sales progression from enquiry to reservation
100%
Pipeline visibility across all sites, in real time
Zero
Double-allocated units since switching to Häuses
4 hrs
Saved per week on manual reporting and data reconciliation
"I can see the whole business in one view now. That alone changed how I manage the company — I'm making decisions from live data, not from whatever spreadsheet someone last updated."
For the team, the shift was equally significant. Sales progressions that previously depended on James chasing updates now run through assigned tasks and automated follow-ups. His PA has one source of truth to maintain. His sales manager has a live pipeline board for each site.
What's next
Scaling with the platform.
The business is in the early stages of two new sites — a 40-unit scheme in Carlisle and a boutique conversion project near Ambleside. Both are already in Häuses, with early interest lists started before planning consent has been granted.
James is now exploring the AI CGI tool to generate renders for units in the Carlisle scheme ahead of the marketing launch — something that would have required a design agency brief and a three-week turnaround.
The business that started with a £4,000 terraced house is now a regional development company. The platform underneath it is finally built to match.
See Häuses for property developers
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