Landowner guide
Option, promotion, conditional or outright sale?
Five routes to market. The one you choose usually moves more money than the price you negotiate afterwards — and most landowners are asked to choose before anyone has explained the difference.
Narrow it down
Four questions.
Answer all four and the tool will suggest the route that most often fits, plus the closest alternative worth putting alongside it. Nothing is sent anywhere — this runs entirely in your browser.
Side by side
The five routes compared.
| Unconditional sale | Conditional contract | Option agreement | Promotion agreement | Hybrid | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who funds planning | Buyer, after completion | Buyer | Developer | Promoter, at their own risk | Whichever party is running the process at the time |
| Who controls the application | Buyer — you have no say | Buyer, usually with consultation duties | Developer | Promoter, usually with landowner consultation | Varies by stage |
| Ownership meanwhile | Transfers immediately | Retained until completion | Retained, but tied up | Retained until the open-market sale | Retained |
| When you are paid | On completion | On completion, after consent | On exercise, after consent | On sale to a third party, after consent | On exercise or on sale |
| How the price is set | Negotiated now, in full | Fixed sum, or formula — often £ per plot or a share of gross development value | Market value at exercise, less an agreed discount and the developer’s costs | Whatever the open market pays, less the promoter’s fee and costs | Whichever mechanism the triggered route uses |
| Typical landowner cost | Agent and legal fees | Legal fees; sometimes a contribution to promotion costs | Discount to market value, commonly in the region of 10–25%, plus the developer’s planning costs [confirm current market range] | Promoter’s fee, commonly in the region of 15–25% of net proceeds, plus recovery of costs [confirm] | As per the route that ends up being used |
| Realistic time to money | Weeks to months | One to three years | Two to ten years | Three to fifteen years on strategic land | Three years upwards |
| Your main risk | Selling before the value is there | Being locked in while the buyer’s appetite cools | Land tied up for years with no obligation on the developer to do anything | A long horizon, and a promoter whose costs erode the split | Complexity — and drafting that fails at the switch point |
| Usually best when | Consent is in place, or you need certainty now | Consent looks achievable and a specific buyer wants the site | One developer is the natural buyer and will commit resource | The site needs promoting into a plan and price should be tested openly | The site is large enough to justify the drafting |
Scroll the table sideways →
Ranges shown are indicative of the wider market rather than a quoted rate, and vary with site size, planning risk, region and how much work has already been done. Every one of them is negotiable.
Where the value actually moves
The headline number is rarely the number.
By the time a landowner is comparing offers, the difference between them is usually buried in six or seven clauses. These are the ones worth reading twice.
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Cost deductions and caps
Whose costs come off the top, which ones qualify, and whether there is any cap at all. An uncapped cost line can quietly consume a large share of an uplift on a slow site.
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Minimum price and price floors
A floor below which you are not obliged to sell. Without one, a formula-driven price can arrive somewhere you would never have agreed to at the outset.
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Longstop dates and extensions
How long your land is committed, and what triggers an automatic extension. Extensions that renew on the filing of an appeal can double a term without anyone renegotiating.
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The endeavours obligation
Reasonable, all reasonable, or best endeavours — a genuine difference in what the other side must actually do, and your only real lever if the site goes quiet.
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What counts as a satisfactory permission
Define it too loosely and a buyer can walk away from a perfectly good consent; too tightly and they are forced to accept one that will not build out.
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Section 106, CIL and abnormals
How planning obligations and abnormal costs are treated in the price mechanism. This is frequently the single largest swing factor in the final figure.
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Retained land, access and ransom
If you are keeping adjoining land, protecting its access, services and future development potential matters more than almost anything else in the document.
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Tax
Capital gains treatment, the timing of receipts, VAT, Stamp Duty Land Tax and any inheritance-tax reliefs currently attaching to the land. Structure can change the net outcome substantially — take specialist tax advice alongside the property advice, not after it.
In more detail
Unconditional sale
You sell outright at an agreed price with no planning condition attached. Cleanest and fastest route, and the right one where permission is already in place or you need certainty above all else. On land without consent it will pay a fraction of the potential value — if you go this way regardless, a well-drafted overage is the only realistic means of keeping a share of what comes later.
Conditional contract
A binding contract on both sides where completion depends on a satisfactory permission being granted. Suits a site with a clear planning path and a committed buyer. You are locked in for the duration, so the longstop date, the endeavours obligation and the definition of a satisfactory permission carry all the weight.
Option agreement
The developer buys the right, not the obligation, to purchase. They fund and control the planning process and decide whether and when to proceed. Attractive where one developer is the natural buyer, but the asymmetry is real: your land can be committed for years with no requirement on them to act.
Promotion agreement
A promoter funds the planning at their own risk, secures consent, and the site is then sold on the open market with proceeds split. Because the promoter’s return rises with the sale price, your interests are aligned on value — the strongest structural argument for this route on strategic land.
Hybrid and joint venture structures
Hybrids combine an option with a promotion fallback, or add a developer overbid right to a promotion deal. Joint ventures go further again, with the landowner contributing the land for a share of development profit. Both can outperform the simpler routes on the right site, and both add cost, complexity and risk that only larger schemes tend to justify.
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