Lodders advises on multi-million pound land sale

The sale of two prime development land sites in Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire, with outline planning permission for new housing including affordable homes, was completed on Friday 2 October 2020.

Dan MacLeod, an associate in Lodders’ real estate practice, advised land promoter Rosconn Strategic Land on the combined multi-million pound land sales.

The first site at Weedon Bec, Northamptonshire, has been purchased by specialist private rented sector developer, Watermeadow Homes. The six-acre former agricultural site was granted outline planning permission in December 2019, and its redevelopment will include the demolition of existing farm buildings and the construction of 47 new homes, 40 percent of which will be affordable housing.

The second is a 13.5-acre site in the Bedfordshire village of Langford, purchased by national housebuilder Bloor Homes, which plans to build 95 new homes, with 35 percent affordable housing, in the highly desirable rural location. The developer will also deliver various contributions to local infrastructure under the site’s Section 106 agreement.

“Both the Northamptonshire and Bedfordshire sites originally went to market early this year and pre-Covid lockdown,” explains Dan MacLeod (pictured), “but despite the economic and market challenges at that time, we managed to achieve an exchange of contracts for both sites mid-lockdown.

“Of course, the pandemic presented unique challenges and caused some delays, but now the sales have successfully completed, both sites’ redevelopment will deliver much-needed housing to their local communities.”

Lodders’ real estate team is highly experienced in dealing with strategic land transactions, and acts for promotors, developers, housebuilders and landowners.

Of these latest deals, team head and Lodders’ partner Mark Miller, says:

“Strategic land work remains buoyant for the team, and developers and promoters are continuing to actively look for sites. The pandemic hasn’t reduced local authority and government-led housing requirements and there are only a limited number of sites suitable for development to deliver these. This demand often results in considerable interest from the developer/housebuilder market, and we anticipate an increasingly competitive and fast-paced market for available sites particularly those which have been successfully promoted and ‘de-risked’ by land promoters.”

Dan O’Donnell, founder of Rosconn Strategic Land comments:

“Although Covid-19 continues to present its challenges, our team at Rosconn Strategic Land have applied their usual tenacious approach, toughed it out, and achieved ‘best in class’ results that have maximised land receipts for our clients.

“It is vitally important to have a well experienced solicitor to work with through these projects, from inception to completion, and Lodders always goes the extra mile. Mark and Dan are a mighty team, a real pleasure to deal with and like ourselves, they operate 24-hours-a-day, 365-days a year, to get transactions completed.

“Lodders is advising Rosconn on plenty of strategic land promotion opportunities across the UK to aid our expansion plan.”

The selling agents for both sites was Strutt & Parker, and Gowlings acted for both Bloor Homes and Barry Howard Homes on the transactions.

Images show:
1. (Main image) The plan of the Weedon Bec site, Northamptonshire.