Keeping your legal sales pack up-to-date – Tips and Traps for Developers

  • 26 November 2025
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Selling units in a development scheme and completing sales when the scheme has achieved practical completion can be an onerous exercise in project management and document collating for a developer’s legal advisor. 

Before initiating the marketing of a scheme, a vast amount of work will have been undertaken by a not insignificant number of advisors in a developer’s professional team. Your advisors will have assisted you in making key strategic decisions in relation to your scheme, the culmination of which will be presented to your customers in the marketing and legal conveyance of the units. What next?

It is imperative that at the point of traction with a customer, legal sales documents are complete and accurate and that they are kept up-to-date throughout the course of build out until the last unit sale in a scheme.

Key considerations:

Each sale is a collective exercise in information sharing. Ensure that your legal advisor is introduced to a person who will be able to provide them with and keep them updated on:

  • site acquisition information and any indemnity insurances;
  • instructions on transaction documents (agreement for lease and lease or transfer);
  • replies to the standard form of enquiries raised in the Property Information Form and Leasehold Information (as applicable);
  • details of unit sales and reservation terms;

Also make an introduction to:

  • the project manager or person who will update on the status of works and build out programme/provide updates on anticipated practical completion dates and practical completion and building regulations completion certificates, specifications and snagging;
  • the planning team who will provide copy planning approvals, condition discharge trackers, rights of light and third party consents to works;
  • the managing agents;
  • the relationship manager;
  • the finance team and advisors who will confirm lender processes and expectations on completion, service charges, ground rents, buildings insurance and provide new home warranty information. 

Update your legal advisor when you are aware of personnel changes on your teams and ensure that all parties are aware of their legal obligation on behalf of the developer to provide accurate information to the legal advisor and keep this information up-to-date.

 

Tips

Keep in mind to provide accurate information;

  1. Any failing in the provision of accurate information pre-exchange risks endangering trust and goodwill engendered between developer and customer, as well as the efficiency of a transaction and ultimately the receipt of revenue and repayment of bank debt.
  2. Any misrepresentation in information provided to a customer in the legal sales pack may entitle a customer to terminate their contract (before completion) or to claim damages. 
  3. At any stage in a transaction, a failure to provide complete and accurate information to your customers can present reputational risks and damage business relationships.
Traps

Share your concerns at an early stage, particularly if they are in relation to:

  1. Commercial realities, lender pressure, tax advice, build out experience or changes in the law that may solicit precedent document changes;
  2. Disputes during built out and planning infringements soliciting changes to replies to standard form enquiries;
  3. Knowledge of disgruntled customers and likely receipt by your legal advisor of correspondence from a customer’s solicitor (appetite for contract assignment consent/dispute as to achieving contract area tolerances or build out in accordance with specification etc) should be discussed with your legal advisor at an early stage so that an agreeable strategy for dealing can be determined quickly, corrected information is provided expediently and the mitigation of a precarious position achieved as soon as reasonably practicable.  

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Anna Jassani
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