Property firm with £100m to spend

Jul 20 2007 by Bill Gleeson, Liverpool Daily Post

CHESHIRE-BASED Gladman Group has unveiled a plan to spend £100m acquiring land for residential development in the next 12 months.

The spending spree comes as a report blamed a lack of houses for sale for a continued sharp rise in house prices. Gladman said it expected to spend the money on around 50 sites.

Gladman’s Fox Land and Property subsidiary has said it is on the look out for strategic sites for residential and mixed use development throughout the region.

Run by the former managing director of Galliford Try’s housebuilding division, Mick Noble, and PlaneStation director Geoff Lansbury, the company wants to find sites of at least 10 acres located close to existing settlements.

The company wants joint ventures with landowners that would include substantial up-front payments in return for a stake.

FLP would then seek planning approval for a development. It said it would also pay agents up to 10% for introductions. Mr Noble said: “Our willingness to pay more up-front rather than option it at minimum cost, appeals primarily to cash-poor, asset-rich rural landowners who do not choose to wait for up to 10 years for the development windfall.

“Being up-front about the potential value of the land once it achieves planning permission and sharing the proceeds of the eventual sale engenders a great deal of trust between us and the landlord.

“We are looking for sites of a minimum of 10 acres adjacent to existing settlements or in a growth area. We are also interested if part of the holding is brownfield land, and we want to talk to any landowners who have already had an approach from a housebuilding company, or with land with options on it, but who are not happy with how it has been promoted for planning.” The £200m turnover Gladman Group also includes commercial property development and retirement home arms.

Gladman’s plan to expand the amount of land available for housebuilding comes as an acute shortage of properties for sale is pushing house prices up faster than expected, according to Britain’s biggest mortgage lender.

Halifax said that it now expected the average cost of a home in the UK to increase by around 6% during 2007, up from its previous forecast of 4%.

It said prices had increased faster than expected during the first four months of the year due to a combination of greater economic momentum and more acute supply shortages than it had predicted.

But the group still expects price growth to ease off during the second half of 2007.

Recent figures have shown that growth may already be slowing, with house prices rising by less than 0.5% for the second month in a row during June.

billgleeson@dailypost.co.uk