The Land Desk

For SME housebuilders and small RPs

From red line to start on site.

Sixteen ready-to-use tools for appraising, securing, approving and delivering land, built by practitioners who have bought sites and taken deals through board approval. Excel workbooks with a worked example and a user guide for every one.

Get the appraisal bundle · £495 See all 16 tools
Residual appraisal Illustrative · 32 homes
Gross development value£8.69m
Build costs and fees(£4.64m)
S106 and CIL(£0.44m)
Planning, sales, finance, land costs(£0.99m)
Developer's profit(£1.50m)
Residual land value£1.12m

Built for the people who buy, price and deliver land

SME housebuilders

Appraise sites properly, hit bid deadlines and give your funder the numbers they ask for.

Small registered providers

Price S106 and package deals with confidence and take investment papers to your board.

Promoters and consultants

Run consistent appraisals and programmes for clients without rebuilding a model each time.

The toolkit

Sixteen tools, from first look to start on site

Every tool is a ready-to-use Excel workbook with a filled-in worked example and a PDF user guide. Buy one tool, a bundle of four or the full toolkit.

Appraisal bundle

Find the value in a site and back it up.
4 tools · £495
01

Residual land appraisal

Unit mix, build costs, prelims, abnormals schedule, S106, CIL, fees, finance and profit to a land value, with land payment terms and overage.

  • —Land value per acre and per plot
  • —Headroom to asking price
  • —5×5 sensitivity grid
09

Sales evidence and pricing

Adjusts comparables for time, asking discount, new-build premium and location, then prices each house type.

  • —Weighted £ per sq ft by bedrooms
  • —Evidence range for each type
  • —Prices ready for Tool 01
16

Build cost estimator

Prices each house type element by element at your chosen specification, plus site-wide works and on-costs.

  • —Cost per plot and per sq ft
  • —Where the money goes
  • —Rates ready for Tool 01
15

Housing mix optimiser

Tests four housing mixes on the same site for land take, density and land value per acre.

  • —Capacity and density checks
  • —Mix rules built in
  • —Best mix ranked

Land deals bundle

Screen sites, structure the deal and fund it.
4 tools · £595
11

Site screening scorecard

Scores up to 10 sites against 16 weighted criteria, with red flags that rule a site out.

  • —Ranked shortlist
  • —Pursue, review or decline
  • —Weak spots by category
12

Option and promotion calculator

Compares an option, a promotion agreement and a conditional contract from both sides of the table.

  • —Landowner and developer returns
  • —Weighted for planning risk
  • —Best deal for each party
13

Joint venture and profit share

Runs a land-for-equity JV through a waterfall: fee, capital back, preferred return, profit split.

  • —Returns and multiples by partner
  • —JV against an outright sale
  • —Sensitivity to sales values
04

Site cash flow

Five years by month: land, S-curve build spend, sales rate and RP tranches, funded by equity then debt.

  • —Peak debt and interest
  • —ROCE and IRRs
  • —Year-by-year funder view

Affordable and partnerships bundle

Price affordable homes, test viability and bid for grant.
4 tools · £595
02

Affordable and S106 pricing

Values social rent, affordable rent, shared ownership and First Homes the way an RP does, and compares up to four RP offers.

  • —Package value by tenure
  • —% of OMV for Tool 01
  • —Best offer against benchmark
07

Partnership and package deal kit

Deal terms, a 32-clause heads of terms checklist with both sides' positions, a negotiation tracker and an offer letter that writes itself.

  • —Payment timing in present value
  • —Gap on open issues
  • —One-page offer letter
10

Planning viability assessment

Residual land value at policy against a benchmark of existing use value plus a premium.

  • —Viable at policy, or not
  • —Maximum viable affordable %
  • —Cost of each 5% of affordable
14

Grant bid tool

Cost against value without grant for every home, so you ask for the grant you need, not more.

  • —Grant by tenure and per home
  • —Benchmark and S106 checks
  • —Start-on-site window check

Land governance bundle

Control the bid, the approval and the run to start on site.
4 tools · £395
03

Bid programme

Works back from the bid deadline in working days, with owners, dependencies and a weekly timeline. Slippage shows in red.

  • —Latest start for every task
  • —Needs-attention list
  • —Next deadlines
05

Land approval and gateway pack

Five gateways from opportunity to start on site, 48 checklist items, an approval matrix and an investment paper template.

  • —Readiness by gateway
  • —Who approves what
  • —Board-ready paper
06

Pre-development programme

Planning, S106, conditions, technical approvals and mobilisation, scheduled forward so any delay flows through to start on site.

  • —Forecast vs target start
  • —Automatic critical path
  • —Key milestones
08

Land pipeline tracker

Every opportunity by stage, weighted by probability, and checked against your business plan year by year.

  • —Coverage by financial year
  • —Pipeline by stage and area
  • —Overdue actions

In every tool

User guide A Guide tab and a PDF with every step explained
Worked example Filled in, so you can see how it works
One-page summary Ready to print or save as PDF for your board
Locked formulas Change only the white cells with blue text
Licensed to you Your company name on every page
Tools that connect Tools 09, 16 and 02 feed Tool 01, which feeds Tool 04

How it works

1 — Download

Buy a single tool, a bundle or the full toolkit. Each one is licensed to your company and sent by email.

2 — Set up once

Enter your build costs, sales values and target returns using the user guide.

3 — Appraise and bid

Run every new site through the same tools, and take a consistent paper to your board.

Pricing

Buy what you need, or get everything

Single tool

£95–£295

One workbook with its user guide and worked example.

Start here

Bundle of four

£395–£595

Four tools that work together. The appraisal bundle is the place to start.

Full toolkit

£1,495

All 16 tools and guides, with 12 months of updates. £395 a year to keep updates after that.

Membership

£79 /month

Every tool, every update, new tools as they launch and a monthly Q&A call. Or £795 a year.

Founding members: £59 a month, fixed for life, for the first 50.

For land and development teams

Team licence · £2,950 a year

Every tool and every update for up to 10 people at one housebuilder or registered provider, so the whole team appraises, bids and reports the same way. Add the set-up service, from £1,500, and we load the tools with your own costs, values and approval rules.

Talk to us about a team licence

Prices exclude VAT. Single tools, bundles, the full toolkit and membership are for one user.

THE LAND DESK · EST. 2026 · LAND TOOLS ·

Written by people who have done the job

The Land Desk is built by land and partnerships practitioners who have appraised and bought sites, priced affordable packages with registered providers and taken deals through board approval at national and regional housebuilders.

Every tool is built from that experience: the checks, controls and numbers a well-run land business relies on, in a form you can pick up and use the same week.

Become a founding member

The first 50 members get every tool, every update and the monthly Q&A call for £59 a month, fixed for life. Join the list to claim a place and get a free sample appraisal.

Claim a founding place

Or email hello@thelanddesk.co.uk with your name and company.

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