Development Checklist No 13 - Owner's/Developer's Objectives for holding Land (Update 1- 23 October 2011)

Check 13.1:    Establish an awareness of the developer'e / landowner's objective(s) in owning land.

A person (owner/developer) holds an estate in land with a particular objective in mind; perhaps even more than one objective. The prime objectives are categorised below. (Here a "person" is an individual or organisation with legal personality, such as a company, a trust, or a partnership.)

The importance of the objective of a person in holding property lies in the statutory regime which affects such ownership. For instance, dealers in land, eg housebuilders, are treated differently for taxation purposes than say, a housing association holding dwellings to let. (See Checklist 15 Captial Taxation and Income Taxation.)


Objectives of Land Ownership:

Residential - a person acquires a dwelling or develops land as a dwelling for personal use. 


Business - a person acquires or creates business premises from which to run a business (retail, manufacturing, service provider etc,) for commercial profit.

Investment - the owner buys property or develops land with the intention of letting it for rent or rent and premium.

Dealing - a person buys a property or develops land with the intention of reselling for commercial profit.

Recreational - person buys or creates a property for personal recreational use.

Objective - a person buys or develops property for altruistic reasons, a charity's orphanage.

Functional - a person holds or creates the property so as to provide a function to support or protect other land, eg holdings of government departments such as the Defence Estate or a local authority estate. On privatisation, towards the end of the 20th Century many functional holdings transferred into private sector to come within the business objective.