Housebuilding

Our philosophy

The UK Housebuilding Team at Shoosmiths covers England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and provides a true one stop shop for homebuilders large, medium and small. Our client portfolio is carefully managed and deliberately varied. For the Shoosmiths res dev team, it is not about “big names” per se, or being able to boast that we act for all of the so called Top 20. It is about providing the best service in partnership with each and every one of our clients, ensuring that we build and develop a chemistry that means that our people can pull together with the clients we serve to deliver the best outcome. This approach enhances both our reputation and that of our clients.

Our people

The housebuilding team was formed over 25 years ago in our Northampton office, but our people now provide our housebuilding services out of Belfast, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, London, Manchester, Milton Keynes, Northampton, Sheffield and Solent. The plot sales team is more than 50 strong, and our acquisitions team also has great strength in depth, such that we are confident that we can provide the right, experienced and highly focussed team for any existing or potential clients. And because we have strength in depth, if we need to change any team make up for a client or provide additional resource particularly at year and half year ends we can do so without difficulty or fuss.

Our relationships

Our clients and our targets are many and varied. And we keep in touch with each other to make sure that we are able to provide a joined up service for each client. Wherever possible, we also conduct Client Listening at both national and regional level with our clients. These meetings/calls are hosted by non-legal Client Relationship Managers and are intended to tease out what we are doing well and what we can do better to make our clients’ lives easier. Feedback from the Client Listening exercises is then filtered out to the client teams through regular catch ups. We are also acutely aware that the best and most profitable business if often done by developing the relationships with the clients we already have. And that starts at the “point of sale” by ensuring that when we seek out new business we try to ensure that we introduce on day one the people that will go on to deliver the service for the client. We do not send in a sales team to try to win over new business, only then to park the work with a different team. It is very much a case of “what you see is what you get” with the Shoosmiths Housebuilding Team. 

And the results

It is precisely because of the philosophy that we adopt that we are able to grow and develop year on year. Whilst we acquire land for many different clients, it is of course the disposal of the houses and flats that returns the cash back to the businesses we serve and in our last financial year we handled 15 % more reservations for our clients than in the previous year, and 12% more completions. In total, in our last financial year, this equates to transactions worth in excess of £3 billion, a large figure by any stretch. And this year we are now helping on sales throughout the UK for more than 100 different housebuilder clients.