Residential Development and Strategic Land

Residential development

We act for landowners, private sector developers, local authorities and affordable housing providers on all aspects of the residential development process from heads of terms to land assembly and from acquisition through to site set up and plot sales.

Our team of specialist residential development lawyers have a proven track record of consistently delivering a pragmatic, efficient service to our clients. Our experience means we can offer our clients a technically excellent and commercially focused service across all types of residential development transaction.

Some of the types of transactions which we can assist with are:-

• Heads of terms
• Site acquisition and site assembly
• Golden Brick contracts
• Lock-out/exclusivity agreements
• Conditional and unconditional contracts
• Ransom strips
• Deferred payments and legal charges 
• Overage and clawback arrangements
• Development agreements
• Joint ventures and collaboration agreements
• Service easements
• Site set up including the production of model plot sale documentation (including restricted and shared ownership leases)
• Implementation of estate management solutions including the formation of management companies and freehold reversion transfers
• Quick and efficient plot sales

Strategic land: landowners and farmers

Our strategic land lawyers regularly act for landowners whose experience of strategic land agreements can vary considerably. For most, the opportunity to sell their land for development is a one-off, but financially significant and often emotionally charged, transaction. Knowing our landowner clients will need to deal with complex, unfamiliar issues, we work in lockstep with them and their land agent to ensure they are properly advised and supported when negotiating with the other party in the transaction, often a national housebuilder, commercial developer or established land promoter.

As a firm, we have a long heritage of working with farmers and farming families and understand the particular challenges and opportunities they face. Our strategic land lawyers regularly advise many of our farming clients who have sold land for development as part of a wider business strategy, including reinvesting the money in other agricultural land. Given the tax and succession planning implications this involves, we work closely with the family’s retained accountants and tax advisers and draw on the specialist expertise of our agricultural, private client and corporate lawyers. This ensures that any proposed development land transaction and subsequent redeployment of the funds raised, are structured tax-efficiently, while meeting the long-term strategic aims of the farming business.

We also work closely with our agricultural lawyers on the implications for any tenanted land that is part of the sale. This includes farming tenancies in occupation, any consequent security of tenure issues which may arise, formalising relationships with any farming tenants by way of a Farm Business Tenancy, or similar structure, and ensuring delivery of vacant possession of the property on or prior to the sale of the consented land.

Some of the strategic land transactions our team can advise you on include:

• Lock-out/exclusivity agreements
• Option agreements
• Planning promotion agreements
• Hybrid agreements
• Release and/or variation of rights, easements and covenants affecting land
• Overage and clawback arrangements
• Pre-emption agreements
• Collaboration/equalisation agreements
• Land Pool Trusts
• Sale of development land
• Deferred payments and legal charges

The following are recent examples of where we have helped, or are helping, landowners and farmers with their strategic land transactions. They include acting for: 

• A farming family in relation to a large strategic land promotion agreement with a national land promoter. The promotion agreement covered over 250 acres of land intended as a new settlement and is typical of the type of strategic land agreements we have been advising on recently. As well as the land promotion agreement itself, the transaction was complicated by the fact that a number of adjoining landowners will need to be involved in the wider planning promotion for the new settlement.
• A landowner in the sale of part of his agricultural landholding to a national housebuilder for the development of up to 150 dwellings, and his related purchase of a new agricultural holding/business of approximately 100 hectares. This transaction also involved our residential development, agriculture and corporate lawyers to achieve a successful sale and purchase within very tight timescales. The sale and purchase involved several complex elements including deferred payment, infrastructure obligations, agricultural tenancies, overage, parent company guarantees and so on.
• A landowner in the sale of part of his property to a national housebuilder, which has outline planning permission for up to 75 dwellings. The deal was complex, involving liaising with a land promoter, securing deferred payment by way of a legal charge, retention of part of the purchase price, and securing a host of post-completion planning and infrastructure obligations.
• A consortia of landowners in connection with the sale of 220 acres of land to a national commercial developer. The disposal includes deferred payments and associated security arrangements, a parent company guarantee, and overage. 
• A large landowning family in connection with a promotion agreement (and and associated landowner collaboration agreement) for c.5,000 residential dwellings plus associated employment uses. 
• A landowner in connection with two separate option agreements on two separate sites, totalling c.70 acres, to the same national housebuilder. 

Developers and land promoters

Our strategic land lawyers have acted for many developers in taking options, subsequently exercising them, and then acquiring multi-million-pound development sites.

Similarly, we act for land promoters entering into promotion agreements. We are used to leading on the subsequent sale of the consented land, which often involves overage, deferred payments, security and ransom/control strips.

We will work alongside you, anticipating and resolving legal issues pragmatically. Our approach is proactive and practical, finding solutions to anything that could adversely affect delivery.

We offer a genuinely senior-led service where the lawyers you want are by your side throughout the deal, from start to finish making the process as smooth as possible for you.

Examples of the work we have undertaken for developers and promoters include acting for: 

• A developer in the sale of two consented residential development sites for c.£14 million each to national housebuilders. The transaction included post-completion infrastructure / servicing obligations, and deferred payments and associated security arrangements.
• A promoter in the sale of a consented promotion site for £34 million to a national housebuilder. The transaction included post-completion infrastructure obligations in relation to retained land, overage, deferred payments and associated security arrangements.
• A promoter in the sale of a consented promotion site for £19 million to a national housebuilder. The transaction included a raft of different overages plus deferred payments and legal charges. 
• A developer / promoter taking an option over a 19 acre greenbelt site, and a hybrid planning and promotion agreement over an adjoining 50 acre site.

Site set-up and plot sales

The site set-up and plot sales team prides itself on its proactive, forward thinking approach. We are prepared to work with and assist our clients with whatever development requirements may arise as part of this process to enable schemes to be set up and plot sales to be completed in a timely manner.  This includes:

• Preparing relevant documents including a schedule of information to provide a buyer with all the information they need for the transaction and  avoiding additional enquiries
• Standardising plot sale documents to reduce costs and time. These are continually being reviewed and updated
• Obtaining estate plan and draft transfer/lease approval from the Land Registry to provide further safeguards as part of the sale process
• Considering environmental issues when issuing title documentation. We upload these on to our portal so the documentation is readily available for any purchaser and their solicitor. This saves time and expense both for the solicitor in approving the title and the cost of sending paper copies to their client.

Registered provider service

Housing is a priority sector for us. We have built our expertise and national reputation in this sector over several decades and we have strong partnerships with our registered provider clients. 

We can advise and assist Registered Providers with:-

• Acquisition of section 106 affordable housing units from volume housebuilders on both a conditional and unconditional basis
• Shared ownership plot sales
• Staircasing transactions
• Preserved right to buy, right to acquire and right to buy sales
• Surrenders, regrants and assignments of existing leasehold properties.
• Lease extensions and one-off property sales 
• Mortgage rescue transactions

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