The fund manager
A defined exposure rather than a list of parcels, a chain it can value and exit, a developer it can hold to a budget and a date, and every related party visible before it deals.
What the manager asks
Land · room 01 of 07
Land.
Land reaches us through relationships with the people who own it: prime parcels, in several markets, held by families, companies and state bodies who would rather see what the land becomes than sell it for cash. We design the platform that land can enter, for the fund manager who will hold it, the developer who will build on it and the owner who contributes it.
We do not sell land, hold it or stand between its owner and whoever acquires it. We are appointed by one party to design the structure, and the parties contract with each other on their own diligence.
Land · seven rooms
01 · Where the land comes from
A fact about arrival
Most structures begin with capital looking for an asset. On this door the land comes first.
The parcels exist, their owners are known, and the capital has not yet been given a shape. That order changes what the structure is built to and nothing about what the firm is.
What arrives
A parcel, or several, from the people who own them: urban infill in a Gulf capital, waterfront on a usufruct from a state body, a plot inside a masterplan, logistics land near a port, a hospitality site with an operator in view, an agricultural holding whose change of use is the whole transaction. With each, a conversation about what the land could become and on what terms the owner would let it.
What is held
The relationship, and whatever it has settled in writing: heads of terms, an exclusivity, an option, a conditional contract, a contribution agreement. Each is held in the owner's name or in the name of the vehicle being designed.
What is not held
No land on the firm's balance sheet, no authority to sell anybody's land, no stake in the platform that holds it, and no second appointment on the same transaction.
What is designed
The platform the land can enter: what the parcel needs to be held, what the portfolio needs to hold it, what the vehicle needs to hold the portfolio, how the developer is joined to it, and what the investor holds at the end of that chain. The work runs from the land outward.
02 · What a parcel must be
Seven items, settled before a vehicle can hold it
A parcel is an asset when seven things about it are settled, and a conversation until they are.
The file on a parcel is assembled before the vehicle is formed, because four of its seven items decide which vehicle may hold the land at all. The access room sets each out in full.
| By item · by consequence | What is settled | What it decides |
|---|---|---|
| Title | The register, the chain to the present holder, and the holder's standing to dispose. | Whether the parcel is an asset at all. |
| Tenure | Freehold, leasehold, usufruct with a term, or the forms the state recognises. | The exit, because a term is a wasting asset and the structure is built for its assignment. |
| Encumbrances | Mortgages, caveats, rights of way, pre-emption rights, state reservations, third-party consents. | What is discharged before transfer and what is carried in with its cost stated. |
| Planning and use | The permitted use, the density, and the consents needed to change either. | The value event, and the programme that reaches it. |
| Access and services | Roads, utilities, drainage, and the cost of bringing each to the boundary. | Whether the parcel is serviced or raw: two assets at the same coordinates. |
| The owner's standing | Who may sign: an individual, a family with several signatories, a company, a trust, a state body and the approval above it. | The signatory, named before the price basis. |
| Confidentiality | What may be said about the parcel, to whom, and when. | Whether the parcel can be named to a register at all. Nothing is named on this site. |
From a parcel to an exposure, in six moves.
Each move is a room on this door. The order is fixed by what each move needs to know, and none of it can be taken early.
The rooms in full- 01AccessWhat state is the relationship in, and what can a structure assume?
- 02FileAre the seven items on each parcel settled, and by whom?
- 03PortfolioWhat exposure is written, and how are the parcels held to it?
- 04PlatformWhich vehicle, in which centre, for which register?
- 05DeveloperWho builds, on what terms, and where does control sit?
- 06ExposureWhat does the investor hold, and how does it leave?
03 · Three seats at the table
What each party needs
A land structure seats three parties, and each is protecting a different thing.
The structure works when each position is written from that party's own concern rather than from the others' confidence. The three cards name the concern; the bands beneath take each in turn.
The developer
Land it does not have to buy outright, control of the programme it is paid to deliver, a promote it can price, and an exit it can fund the next scheme from.
What the developer needsThe landowner
A stake in what the land becomes rather than a cheque for what it is, a valuation it can trust, a class that pays when the parcel pays, and its name kept out of the room until it says otherwise.
What the owner keeps04 · For the fund manager
Six questions, each answered in a document
A manager is offered a portfolio, and asks six questions before it is a platform.
The difference between a parcel and an exposure is a written policy: what may enter, what may not, how it is valued, when it pays and how it leaves. The six questions are that policy read from the manager's side of the table, and each has a document it lives in.
What is the exposure
A typology or two, in named markets, at a stated entitlement at entry, on one programme. Written as the investment policy in the constitution before the first parcel enters, and every later parcel admitted against it or refused.
What is in it on day one
The seed parcels by state of access: under option, under conditional contract, contributed. A seed schedule with each parcel's state and consent position, and a ramp-up period during which the seed may breach the concentration limits.
How is it held
One company per parcel, seated in the parcel's state and in a holder category that state permits; a portfolio holder above them; the platform vehicle above that. Every layer answers a question the layer above it cannot, and each carries a cost stated before it exists.
How is it valued
Independently, on one basis from contribution to exit, with the residual's assumptions disclosed: the consent assumed, the programme assumed, the evidence relied on. A valuation an investor cannot test is a number the manager chose.
Who builds on it
A developer joined by one of four structures, with control settled in a matrix, overrun and delay priced before the first certificate, and a promote paid on realisation rather than on a valuation day.
How does it leave
Parcel by parcel, the portfolio whole, admission to trading, or distribution in kind. Each exit the policy contemplates is run against the chain as designed before the platform is formed, and the result is one page the register can read.
05 · For the developer
Land on terms it can build on
A developer with a programme and no site needs land it does not have to buy first.
The land a developer wants is often held by people who will not sell to a developer. A platform that holds that land through relationships is the counterparty the developer needs, and the work is to settle on what terms it enters.
Four ways in
An option with a development agreement, a land-for-equity joint venture, forward funding, or forward purchase. Each settles control in a different place and moves money at a different time, and a platform commonly uses two of them across its parcels.
Control, as a matrix
Nine decisions, and for each the party who takes it and the party whose consent it needs. Design, programme, budget and sales to the developer within thresholds; financing, disposal and change of control to the platform. A developer who holds every decision has a platform that holds only risk.
The promote
A share above the hurdle on the parcels it builds, held in the joint venture beneath the platform and paid on realisation. The developer is paid for delivery, on delivery, and the formula for its three exits is written at formation.
Overrun, delay, step-in
Each with a threshold and a consequence, written before the first certificate. A threshold settled after the overrun is a negotiation, and the party in possession of the site wins it.
What the developer brings
The programme with its consent calendar, the budget with its contingency, the record verified, the registration the state requires before an off-plan sale, the contractor and its bonds, and the lender's indicative terms. The structure is drafted from that file and the platform's, not from the term sheet.
06 · For the landowner
A stake in what it becomes
An owner who contributes rather than sells becomes an investor, and is treated as one.
Most of the land on this door arrives from owners who want to stay in what the land becomes. Contribution for units is how they do it, and five terms decide whether it works for them.
The valuation
Independent, at entry, on the same basis the platform will use for every later valuation. The owner's parcel and the investors' money are valued by the same hand on the same rule.
The class
A separate class with its own lock-up and its own distribution position, ranking beside the cash investors on the parcel the owner contributed and behind them elsewhere. The owner's early parcel and the investors' later money are not paid from each other.
The say
A seat on the investors' committee and a right to be consulted on design. Not a consent over use, programme or sale: an owner who wants that has described a joint venture, and the developer room designs it.
The way out
The lock-up ends when the programme on the parcel does. A member of a family who wants cash now is paid by the platform against a share of the contribution, from first close, so the rest can stay.
The name
The owner's relationship is the firm's to keep. No parcel is named to a register, in a document or on this site until its owner has consented, and a platform marketed on a parcel whose owner has not consented has a defect before it has a register.
07 · Where we stand
One side of the table
We are appointed by one party and we design for that one.
The manager, the developer or the owner appoints the firm. The structure returns to that party as a design: the chain, the terms, the sequence with an owner and a date on each step, and the places it breaks. The other parties read it through their own advisers and contract with each other.
What we hold
The relationship with the owner, and the design.
What we do not hold
The land, a stake in the platform, a place in the chain, or a second appointment on the same transaction.
What stays with counsel
Every instrument, every opinion on title, tenure, category and tier, every valuation, and every tax position in every state, each in its own adviser's name. Your counsel signs the law; we design the structure that advice is set against.
None of this is advice, and none of it invites any investment or names any land.
08 · The rooms
The index
Six rooms stand under this door, in the order the work is done.
Each takes one stage from the land outward and ends where the firm's work ends and counsel's begins. The sixth works five situations as types.
- 02The accessThe six states a relationship moves through, what a parcel's file holds, seven typologies and what each needs, and the markets the relationships sit in.
- 03The portfolioThe exposure statement written before the first parcel enters, one company per parcel, the chain above it, land contributed for units, and eight moves in order.
- 04The platformSeven forms by centre and state, the tier and its register, classes and the waterfall, valuation, liquidity and financing, governance, and the exit test.
- 05The developerFour structures compared on where control sits, the control matrix, overruns and step-in, the developer's three exits, and what each side supplies.
- 06The exposureWhat the investor holds at the end: six questions, classes and ranking, a valuation it can test, liquidity told at subscription, an exit written at entry, and every conflict visible.
- 07Worked land structuresFive situations as types: what arrives, what binds, the routes, the structure that holds, and where it breaks.
Land · 13 minute readWorked land structuresFive land structures worked as types: a landowner who wants units rather than cash, three cities under one platform, a developer without land, a masterplan plot with a state counterparty, and a portfolio that must exit parcel by parcel.
Land · 12 minute readThe portfolioHow several parcels become one exposure an investor can hold: the exposure statement written before the first parcel enters, one company per parcel, the chain above it, land contributed for units, the sequence, the constraints and the failure points.
Land · 12 minute readThe developerThe interface between a land platform and the developer who builds on it: what each party needs, four structures compared, the control matrix, overruns, delay and step-in, the developer’s exit, and what each side supplies.
What this door is attached to
- The ownership regimes it reads The onshore interfaces · the Kingdom, Qatar and Kuwait
- The Indian end of it India · land, read properly
- The vehicles it chooses among Structures · vehicles and legal form
Request an introduction.
A portfolio of land, a platform to hold it, a developer to build on it and an exposure an investor can hold. Each is designed before the documents are drawn, for the party who appoints us.
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