Land Agent, Developer or Land Promoter: Who Does What, and Who Acts for You?

The easiest way to work out whose side someone is on is to ask two plain questions: who asked them to do the job, and who are they answerable to if it goes wrong? The answer is not always the same as who pays the bill. A buyer can pay towards your land agent's fees without that agent ever taking an instruction from the buyer, in the same way that an employer can pay for a staff member's accountant without the accountant working for the employer.

The promoter is the one row that does not fit neatly. You appoint a promoter, so in a sense it works for you, but it is also paid from the same pot of money that you are, which means its interests and yours line up on some points and not on others. That is the nature of the model rather than a criticism of it, and it is explained further down this page.

Your solicitor is the other adviser who is always yours: a solicitor acts only on instructions from you, and our guide on whether you need a solicitor to sell land covers what the solicitor does and how one is chosen. If the question on your mind is which of these businesses has written to you, our guide to what it means when a land company writes to you sets out how each kind of letter works.

A land agent is a professional who advises on land and rural property: what it is worth, how it is used, how it is let, and how it is bought and sold. Most land agents who handle development deals are chartered surveyors, members of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, or RICS, working in its rural or land practice. When you instruct a land agent, they act for you and owe their duty to you.

Being a member of RICS is more than a badge. Every member and every RICS-regulated firm works under the institution's Rules of Conduct, which took effect on 2 February 2022 and are built on five headings: honesty and integrity, competence, good-quality and diligent service, respect, and acting in the public interest. Several of the rules speak directly to whose side the agent is on.

• Rule 1.2 says members and firms do not allow themselves to be influenced improperly by others, giving as examples work referrals, gifts, hospitality or payments, or by their own self-interest.
• Rule 1.3 requires them to identify actual and potential conflicts of interest throughout a job, and not to give advice where a conflict, or a significant risk of one, arises, except as the separate RICS standard on conflicts allows.
• Rule 1.5 says advice and opinion must be given honestly and objectively, based on relevant and reliable evidence.
• Rule 1.6 says members and firms are open and transparent with clients about their fees and services.
• Rule 3.2 requires them to agree with you the scope of the service, its limitations and the timescales.
• Rule 3.3 requires a firm to tell you that it is regulated by RICS.

The conflicts rule is set out in detail in the RICS professional standard Conflicts of interest, first issued in March 2017 as a professional statement, effective from 1 January 2018 and reissued as a professional standard in July 2023. Paragraph 1.1 says a member or regulated firm must not advise or represent a client where doing so would involve a conflict of interest, unless everyone who is or may be affected has given prior informed consent. The standard names three kinds of conflict: a party conflict, where a duty to one client clashes with a duty to another on the same or a related job; an own interest conflict, where the duty to a client clashes with the surveyor's or firm's own interests; and a confidential information conflict, where information one client should be told is information another client is owed confidence about.

Two points in the standard's commentary are worth knowing as a landowner. It notes the natural adversity between a seller and a prospective buyer, and says a firm acting as selling agent should be cautious about advising a potential buyer of the same property. It also notes that the prospect of future work and referrals can itself create an own interest conflict that may need to be disclosed. Land buyers sometimes pay an introduction fee to an agent who brings them a site. We pay an introduction fee on any site introduced to us that leads to a signed agreement, and we expect that fee to be disclosed to the agent's client in writing. RICS rule 3.8 asks the same of the agent: any referral or introduction a member makes for a client must be in the client's best interests, and the client must be told about any financial or other benefit the member or firm receives from it. The rules exist precisely so that arrangements of that kind sit in the open alongside the agent's duty to you.

1. Before anything is agreed. The agent gets to know the land and the family: who owns which parcel, whether there are tenants or grazing licences, which areas the family wants to keep, and what the land is worth today in its current use. That current-use figure matters for your own planning, for your accountant and, where relevant, for probate.
2. Explaining the proposal. When a developer, promoter or land company makes a proposal, the agent explains how that kind of agreement works, what it would mean for the rest of the holding, and what the timetable is likely to look like. For a family with several owners, the agent is often the person who makes sure everyone hears the same explanation.
3. The heads of terms. The agent usually acts for you in agreeing the heads of terms, the short written summary of the deal that comes before the legal drafting. With us, the heads of terms set out the price, any option fee, the land included and how your legal and agent fees are covered, and the fee contribution is written into them.
4. Alongside your solicitor. While the solicitors draft the agreement, the agent works on the land plan, the access to any land you are keeping, and the practical arrangements for surveyors and consultants coming on to the land.
5. During the planning period. The agent is your point of contact on the ground: when the ecologists or the archaeologists need access, which gates must stay shut, and how farming fits around the work. Many families also like their agent to keep an eye on the planning progress and report back.
6. Towards completion. The agent helps with the arrangements for handing over the land, such as bringing a grazing licence or a tenancy to an end at the right time, and the last harvest or cut before vacant possession.

The solicitor guide linked above also sets out the protections that come with a RICS-regulated firm, such as professional indemnity insurance and a complaints scheme, so they are not repeated here. On the money side, the agent's fee basis and who pays it are covered in the next section.

There is one thing a land agent on a development deal does not usually do at the start, and that is market the land. On a sale of farmland as it stands, marketing is most of the job. On a development deal, the company has come to you, so the work is advice and agreement rather than finding a buyer. Under a promotion agreement, marketing comes later, once permission is granted and the land is sold on the open market.

You do not need one by law. No rule requires a landowner to instruct a land agent to sell land or to sign an option, and on a small, simple paddock with one owner some people work with their solicitor alone. On anything with tenants, several owners, part of a larger holding or practical questions on the ground, a land agent earns their place.

What the law does require is clarity about the agent's pay when the agent is acting to find you a buyer. The Estate Agents Act 1979 applies to anyone who, in the course of a business and on a client's instructions, works to introduce the client to someone who wants to buy or sell an interest in land. That covers fields and development sites, not only houses. Section 18 then says that before the client enters into the contract, the agent must give particulars of the circumstances in which the client will become liable to pay, the amount of the agent's pay or how it will be worked out, and any other payments that may fall due under the contract. The sanction has teeth: under section 18(5), an agent who skips that step cannot enforce the contract against the client except by order of the court. RICS rule 1.6 says the same thing in professional terms: be open and transparent with clients about fees and services.

The published figures for an open-market sale of farmland, typically a percentage of the price, are given with their source in our guide to who pays the fees in a land deal. On a development deal, the agent's bill is commonly met, wholly or partly, by the other side. Rupert Bendell of Wells McFarlane, writing in Farmers Weekly, described a developer taking an option as one that will also pay the landowner's agent and solicitor fees for entering into the agreement.

Our approach is simple. We contribute to the fees of your own land agent and solicitor, so it costs you nothing to get it done properly. You choose the firms, they act for you alone, and we work with whichever solicitor and land agent you appoint. The contribution is written into the heads of terms, and nothing is advanced to you to be taken back later.

One point of law surprises people. Section 23A of the same Act lets the government require agents to belong to a redress scheme for complaints, but only for estate agency work in relation to residential property. The property ombudsman schemes that homebuyers know are therefore built around homes. For a field, the protection comes mainly from the agent's professional body: RICS requires every regulated firm to publish a complaints procedure that includes an alternative dispute resolution provider, and to hold professional indemnity insurance.

A developer, in the sense most landowners mean, is a housebuilder: a company that buys land in order to build and sell homes on it. The people who contact landowners are its land buyers or land managers, employees who act for the company. They are often former land agents themselves and know the subject well, but their job is to secure land on terms that work for their employer. That is the plain difference between a land agent and a developer: one advises you, the other is on the other side of the deal.

The large housebuilders run their land buying through regional businesses, each with its own land team, and report the land they control to shareholders in two parts. The first is land with planning permission or close to it, ready to build on in the next few years. The second is longer-term land without planning, held under options or other agreements, which the company is working to take through the planning system. Taylor Wimpey's half year results for 2026 show the scale.

Those figures say two useful things to a landowner. First, most of a large housebuilder's long-term land is controlled rather than owned: the company holds a right or agreement over it while the planning work goes on, rather than buying it outright on day one. Second, 39% of its completions in the half year came from land that started life in that strategic pipeline, so a large share of the homes being built began as fields without planning, often many years earlier. The same results describe the company as highly selective in its approach to the land market and targeting smaller sites.

A housebuilder usually wants land of a size and in a place that suits its own building programme, and it may buy land with planning already granted as well as taking options. If a housebuilder's land buyer contacts you, your land agent acts for you in that conversation in exactly the same way as with any other party.

A strategic land company secures land with development potential and takes it through the planning system, rather than building homes itself or selling the land for a fee. Subhan Property Group is a strategic land company, and this is how our route works.

• The price is agreed at the start. It is written into an option agreement as a figure, set above what the land is worth today in its current use.
• We pay for and run all the planning work, at our own cost and risk. Surveys, consultants, the application and any appeal are ours to commission and fund, and on a larger site that can reach £300,000.
• You keep the land and keep using it. Farming, grazing and short lets carry on until completion.
• If permission is granted, we complete the purchase and you receive the agreed price, on completion once planning permission has been secured, with milestones set out in the agreement.
• If permission is not achieved, you keep your land and owe nothing. Nothing spent on surveys, applications or appeals is recovered from you.
• The agreement continues while any planning application or appeal is being decided, so a decision that is still pending never leaves you without a buyer.

In the table at the top of this page we sit in the row of the other party, and it is right to be plain about that. We are the buyer under the agreement. Our solicitors register the option on your title and later register the purchase, and the planning consultants we instruct act on our instructions. That is exactly why we contribute to the cost of your own land agent and solicitor: so that you have advisers whose duty runs to you, at no cost to you.

Two other features are part of how we work. We do not contact the council, your neighbours or anyone else about your land without your agreement, and the land we write about is land we have already looked at in a preliminary review. How the agreement itself is drafted, registered and exercised is the subject of our guide to option agreements.

A land promoter is a business that takes land through the planning system under a promotion agreement and, once permission is granted, has the land sold on the open market, usually to a housebuilder. The promoter normally does not buy the land itself. It pays for the planning work, then recovers its costs and takes a fee out of the sale proceeds, and the landowner receives the balance.

Michelmores, a law firm, describes the promotion agreement as one where the landowner enters into an agreement with a specialist promoter, which seeks planning at its own risk and cost before the land is sold, and puts the promoter's reward at typically 10% to 25% of the sale price after deductions. Rupert Bendell of Wells McFarlane, in Farmers Weekly, gave a narrower range, saying promoters usually seek 15% to 20% of the sale proceeds. The two sources were written several years apart and measure the fee on slightly different bases, but they agree on the shape: a percentage, calculated at the end, after the promoter's costs and the sale costs have come out.

Promotion agreements are a long-established model, and a good promoter can do well for its landowner. The figure the landowner receives is simply the last number to be known, because it depends on the market at the time of sale, the permission actually granted and the costs recovered before the split. The order of those deductions, with example figures, is worked through in our guide to promotion agreement fees and deductions, and the page that puts an option, a promotion agreement and an outright sale next to each other shows where each one places the cost and the risk. With us, the price is the first number to be known: written into the agreement before any planning money is spent, with all of the planning cost on our side.

The LPDF is the trade body for the businesses on the other side of the table. It was formed in 2018 and describes itself as the collective voice of land promoters, housebuilders and commercial developers. Its company was registered in March 2022 as the Land Promoters and Developers Federation and, according to the Companies House record, took its present name, the Land, Planning and Development Federation, on 3 October 2023, keeping the initials LPDF. The members' code dated October 2026 still prints the earlier name on its cover, but it is the same body.

The LPDF Code of Conduct, October 2026, sets general standards for members. Among them:

• Honesty. Members must act honestly in all dealings with members, consultants, local authorities, consultees, the public and others (2.1), and must not knowingly make a false or inaccurate statement or otherwise mislead (2.2).
• Paperwork. Contractual documentation must be in line with current statutory requirements (3.2.1).
• Counterparties. Members must fulfil their financial dealings and contractual obligations with their counterparty with integrity and a duty of care (4.2).
• Marketing. It must be clear, legal and truthful (4.5).
• Complaints and sanctions. Complaints about breaches go through the federation's complaints procedure, it will not investigate a complaint based solely on a commercial dispute (8.2), and it reserves the right to end a member's membership for a breach (8.5).

Two limits are worth understanding. The code says plainly that it is not legally binding and is put forward as good practice (3.1.2). And it is written for the industry as a whole: it speaks of counterparties and the public rather than setting out specific duties to landowners. It is a statement of standards by the businesses themselves, which is a different thing from the professional duty a land agent or solicitor owes to you as their client. That is one more reason the advisers who act for you matter, whoever the other party is.

A planning consultant prepares and argues the planning case for land: they read the local plan and national policy, decide which route to permission fits the site, commission and coordinate the technical reports, write the planning statement, talk to the council's officers and, if needed, run an appeal. Many are chartered town planners, members of the Royal Town Planning Institute, the RTPI, and use the letters MRTPI after their names.

A planning consultant acts for whoever instructs them. On a development deal that is almost always the company running the planning: the housebuilder under its option, the promoter under a promotion agreement, or us under ours. That is normal and sensible, because the party paying for the planning and carrying its risk needs to direct it. It also means the consultant is not your adviser, which is one more reason your own land agent is there. Planning work also sits outside the estate agency rules described above: section 1(2)(e) of the Estate Agents Act 1979 says the Act does not apply to things done in connection with applications and other matters under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, so for a chartered planner the rules on terms and fees come from the RTPI code instead.

The RTPI's Code of Professional Conduct, effective from 1 February 2023, puts limits on what any client can ask of a chartered planner, which protects the quality of the case made for your land:

• members must disclose to their employer or clients any potential conflicts of interest (clause 3), and any offers of inducements, discounts, gifts or commissions (clause 6);
• members must exercise fearlessly and impartially their independent professional judgement (clause 11);
• they must not make or subscribe to statements or reports contrary to their own genuine professional opinions (clause 12);
• they must base their advice on relevant, reliable and supportable evidence (clause 13);
• their terms of engagement must include a written fee agreement and a clear indication of the likely fees and expenses (clause 15).

In practice, clause 12 is the one landowners feel. A chartered planner will make the strongest honest case for your land, but will not tell the council or an inspector something they do not believe. A site with a real case is helped by that; a site without one is better told early, which is why the first step on any site is a careful review rather than a promise.

For most owners of a field, paddock or yard near a settlement, the question is not really who to sell to but whether the land has a realistic case for homes at all. That is something that can be answered from records and maps before anyone spends money. A free desktop review of your land gives you that answer: we look at the planning position, the constraints and the access, and tell you plainly whether we think it has a case, and why.

If it does, the next steps are set out on our how it works page. You bring in your own land agent and solicitor, or we can work with the ones you already use, and their fees are contributed by us from the heads of terms onwards.