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Specialist property team helps keep Britain building

A SPECIALIST team in the Property department at law firm Ward Hadaway is continuing to play a very important role in boosting Britain's housing supply after seeing demand for its work rise by over 20 per cent.

The specialist “Plot Sales Team” acts for many of the UK’s leading housebuilders, advising them on the sale of newly completed homes and on part-exchange transactions.

The team successfully completed the sale of 3,336 new homes in the 12 months to the end of April 2017 at many new development sites across the country.

This represents over 2% of all new homes built during the period in England, meaning more than one in every 50 new houses in the country has seen Ward Hadaway involved in its sale.

Ward Hadaway’s 33-strong plot sales team is one of the largest in the North of England with Team members based at all three of the firm’s offices in Newcastle, Leeds and Manchester.

As well as plot sales work (the sale of newly completed homes for housebuilder clients), the specialist Team also deals with part-exchange transactions, where the buyer of the new home is selling their existing home to the housebuilder.

The Team successfully completed 726 part-exchange acquisitions and onward sales for housebuilder clients over the year to the end of April 2017.

This means that in just 12 months, the Team worked on a total of 4,092 separate transactions, an increase of more than 20% on the number of transactions it worked on in the previous year. On average, the team completed more than 13 transactions every working day of the year.

Lesley Fairclough

Lesley Fairclough

Lesley Fairclough (pictured), Partner and Head of Development at Ward Hadaway, said: “This is an absolutely tremendous performance by the Team.

“Advising on plot sales and part-exchange transactions is a key part of the housing development process and helps to keep Britain building.

“Each one of the transactions also represents someone’s home, whether buying or selling, and this is something which we never lost sight of when we are carrying out this work.

“The fact that the Team’s work involves more than 2% of all new homes being built across the country is a tremendous achievement and is a tribute to their skills, hard work and dedication.

“It is all the more impressive when you consider that the amount of work the Team has been involved with has gone up by 20% on what was a record year for the team in 2015/16.

“A number of these transactions involved the Government’s Help to Buy scheme, which has certainly had a very positive effect on house sales in the new homes sector.

“We aim to continue to help our many housebuilder clients to achieve their annual target numbers for selling new homes and to provide their customers with an efficient, professional service.”

As well as covering work on a wide range of different housing developments, including both freehold and leasehold, the Plot Sales Team has also dealt with more complex legal structures and estate set-ups.

Please note that this briefing is designed to be informative, not advisory and represents our understanding of English law and practice as at the date indicated. We would always recommend that you should seek specific guidance on any particular legal issue.

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