... for those who like that sort of thing, in The Telegraph:
Operating in the murky world of “strategic land” promotion, these firms prepare sites for development by doing the time-consuming work of gaining planning permission. It is then sold on “shovel-ready” to housebuilders...
According to Simon Hodson, head of residential land at JLL, while an average acre of agricultural land may sell for £5,000 to £10,000, land with planning permission for residential development is normally worth £1m-4m per acre, depending on its location and the amount of infrastructure and preparation needed before building.
It's The Telegraph and their ilk who insist on measures which push up land prices, are they so surprised when others try and cash in? If they wanted, we could put them all out of business tomorrow by collecting taxes from land values instead of employment and output, but that would go against Rule One.
These companies will then take a cut of 10-30pc of the sale value, depending on the size of the site. This means that the murky underbelly of the land market is highly profitable: in the year ending March 31 2016, Gladman made a pre-tax profit of £11.6m, while Gallagher’s was £79m in the year to June 30 2016.
So one group goes through the strain, hassle and expense of getting planning and banks 10-30% of the sale value and they are the baddies in the piece. Why no ire for the large landowners who take no risk, do precisely nothing and bank the other 70-90%?
When promoting land, these companies will seldom purchase it upfront, but instead either pay the owner an option for exclusive rights... The options don’t need to be registered anywhere, and they are not obliged to detail their deals in their results.
That's quite simply not true.
The approach of many of these land businesses put them in the crosshairs of “Not in my back yard” residents. Local newspapers are full of references to acrimonious planning meetings caused by Gladman’s plans.
NIMBYs oppose all new development, regardless who is behind it.
Late last year the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, accused Gladman’s firm of “reflecting the worst features of capitalism” when it applied for planning permission opposite his Berkshire home, disrupting his plans to sell up.
What was that bit about "do unto others"?
... by charging a premium for a clean site that’s ready to be built on, it forces developers to increase house prices to recoup the high outlay on land, while cutting the viability of building affordable homes.
“Land promoters deliberately pump the cost of land higher and higher, then reap the rewards when they sell it,” says Catharine Banks, policy officer at Shelter.
Nope. The actual builder starts with the ultimate likely selling price, then deducts build costs, the cost of "infrastructure and preparation" (as explained in the second paragraph above!!) and hoped for profit margin. The price he'll pay for actual land is a balancing figure.
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