Filed under landowners.
An option agreement gives a developer the right, but not the obligation, to buy your land at an agreed price within an agreed period. You are paid for granting it whether or not the purchase ever happens, and during the option period you generally continue using the land as before.
The terms that matter are the length of the exclusivity, whether it can be extended unilaterally, how the purchase price is indexed if the period runs long, and what happens to any works carried out on the land if the option lapses. Development timescales are measured in years, so an option that looked short at signature can become the binding constraint.
The question worth asking first is simply why your land. A developer who can explain the grid connection point, the distance to it and the constraint they are solving is working from a real plan. One who cannot is holding your land as an option on somebody else’s decision.
