Trailblazers in housing in Scotland.


With the Scottish Government setting ambitious targets for the delivery of new homes, Burness Paull's housebuilding team are well-placed to support the delivery of those targets, having nationwide scale and depth of resources in all aspects of this sector.

Our real estate and construction lawyers provide a wide range of services to housebuilders, social housing providers, landowners and funders from initial conception to on-site delivery bringing housing developments to fruition.

Our Housebuilding Expertise

We have the largest and most respected team of housebuilding lawyers in Scotland. We navigate the planning process and ensure the best outcome to realise the maximum development potential of land.

We are focused on all elements of providing new build housing across sectors and tenures to ensure the delivery of new homes including:

  • Mainstream Housebuilding
  • Social and Affordable Housing
  • Build to Rent Homes
  • Retirement & Later Life Living
  • Student Accommodation

Working hand-in-hand with our planning, construction and finance teams we advise clients from project inception to site promotion, infrastructure, funding, joint ventures, development set up, through to land and home sales.

New structures and solutions are constantly required to overcome difficulties and to facilitate development. We are at the forefront of emerging contractual structures and funding arrangements such as the funding of infrastructure. This can include bespoke joint venture arrangements, consortium agreements, infrastructure agreements, overage and clawback agreements and other cost and profit-sharing arrangements necessary to provide funding, share risk and unlock development.

We work closely with the key industry body Homes for Scotland with representation on various committees and we are the headline sponsor of its annual awards ceremony - seen as 'the' housebuilding industry event in Scotland.

Mainstream Housebuilding

We act for major housebuilders across Scotland in addition to many smaller and niche developers including new entrants and established players. We also act for a wide range of landowners and are currently advising on some of the largest new settlements planned in Scotland which will deliver over 20,000 new homes.

Existing clients include:

  • Avant
  • Barratt
  • CALA
  • Taylor Wimpey
  • Cruden
  • Scotia
  • Miller
  • Springfield
  • Dandara
  • CHAP
  • Malcolm Allan
  • Persimmon

The firm's dedicated plot sales team delivers more than 2,000 home sales per year, selling a range of house types across the country from volume housing to executive homes at the very top end of the market.

Social Housing and Affordable Housing

We act for some of Scotland’s largest housing associations.

With the increased availability of funding within the sector, we are at the cutting-edge of developing new models and are regularly involved with social housing projects acting for Registered Social Landlords, housebuilders partnering with RSLs and developers who assemble and promote sites.

We have the expertise to help clients develop tax-efficient structures to deliver value and meet other community objectives and initiatives including local employment, training and tenant engagement, as well as wider regeneration projects.