Shorts understand how I work, and I understand how they work. I know which areas to talk to them about for specific advice.
David Cross - CEO at Sky-House Co
The Shorts team has a proud and successful history working with David Cross, a South Yorkshire entrepreneur, chartered architect and business leader. From accounts and management information services, to tax advice, compliance, and facilitating a Management Buyout. David has been a valued client for many years.
With the help of Rob Brown of the Accounting Influencers Podcast, we caught up with David to talk about his story, his businesses, and how Shorts has helped him develop and grow his award-winning urban property development company, Sky-House Co.
This Case Study includes highlights taken from a recent video conversation. You can watch the full video below.
Building Sky-House Co
“I originally founded Coda Studios in 2003, specialising in residential properties, mainly doing city centre residential mixed-use developments. Following the crash in 2008, I was trying to find a way to innovate the housing marked in urban and city centre locations, and that was where SkyHouse was born.
“SkyHouse is really about roof gardens, big windows, and gentle density. This means we build more houses per acre than national house builders. But that doesn’t mean we just cram them in. If you think about Victorian suburbs, that density, tree lined streets, linear runs of houses, vertical hierarchy and architecture detail is what we tried to replicate.
“We don’t do things that are faddy – we don’t use modern cladding systems that might date or get damaged. We use brick and stone and keep it robust so it will weather and date and last forever.
“We also want to be eco-friendly, so we are doing things like zero gas in advance of the rules changing in 2025. We are zero carbon under construction by offsetting and are aiming to get as low energy as we can commercially with what is ostensibly a mass market volume house building business.
Our developments are fully electric with low energy radiators, lighting and appliances, Sustainable Urban Drainage Solutions [SUDS], highly insulated fabric, EV charging points, and so on. Right now we’ve got three live developments completing this year, which gives us around 100 completions and around £25m turnover.”
Building an in-house team
“Before the first COVID-19 lockdown, we’d been what classes as a property developer, before that we outsourced everything. We had a bad experience with a contractor that went bust in our maiden voyage, which was incredibly painful.
“So, in lockdown, we decided to bring everything in-house. We recruited some really great people and grew the team ready for the summer. We’ve grown the team to around 32 full time staff and 10 regular subcontractors.
“We have a good size house building team where we are our own contractor. Shorts helped us set up different divisions to do different things across construction, sales and lettings, and more.”
How the Shorts team helped
“Being quite trigger happy, I like to have advice fairly quickly. Shorts understand how I work, and I understand how they work. I know which areas to talk to them about for specific advice.
“Sometimes you don’t know what question to ask, because you don’t know if it’s a question you should be asking. That’s the thing with tax and corporate structures – sometimes you don’t know about it until you encounter it. That’s why we’re going to gear up for an audit at some point, which I will be asking Shorts for help with.
“With Shorts it can be a quick WhatsApp message, a text message, a quick email, or a phone call. They’re always happy to answer, which is great!
“The service provided by Malcolm and Shorts has been absolutely instrumental. I’m very happy with what’s happened over the last 10 to 15 years, and Malcolm and his team have been a part of that. They started with Monitor Pro, then Genus, they helped me grow and exit the Coda business. It means I can focus on what I do best, while taking their advice on board.”
How Shorts help outside of the business
“Outside of the business, Malcolm and his team help with our entire personal affairs, such as assets, liabilities, and more. We talk about the plan. What does my life look like when I’m 55, 65, 75 and so on? What’s the wish list?
“Shorts and I discuss ideas based around things I’d like to acquire in due course, how that may look and how we can afford it. What do I need to do now with regards to tax planning?
“I like to enjoy life; we’ve got a place abroad. I’ve got my little toy car. And we’d like to do all the things abroad that will add to our life experience, as well as financial planning for the kids.”
About Sky-House Co
The Sky-House Co mission is “to create high density developments that will enable efficient brownfield development to ensure greenbelt and green field land is protected. Urban communities that can walk to all amenities thereby reducing the necessity for car travel creating communities that are healthier and closer.”
Sky House is working to develop “sensitively compact” communities, working with local businesses, communities and suppliers to help boost the Sheffield economy. You can learn more about the work they do on their website.
