It’s been a challenging few months (and years) for businesses across all sectors and even large, established organisations like ourselves, have had to adapt and embrace change during these difficult times.

The criteria for the Newcomer Award category was open to organisations or individuals who have launched or moved into a new sector in the last three years. There has been a reported surge in new business start-ups during the pandemic with people taking time away from the work place to reflect and refocus.

All of the residential property businesses that have been shortlisted in this category, whether they are in development, investment, agency, proptech or fund management, should all be congratulated on their achievements. They’ve adapted and embraced change, innovation and become successful in a short period of time.

Here at Ward Hadaway, we also had to adapt and are worked hard to ensure we were able to continue to provide expert legal advice and support to all of our clients throughout the pandemic. In the previous financial year working for our national and regional housebuilder clients, our 29 strong plot sales team facilitated the successful legal completion of over 5,500 homes – that means one in every ten homes built and sold in the North of England was facilitated by Ward Hadaway.

We acted as authorised signatories for our large house builder clients, to enable them to continue to buy land for development and sell new homes seamlessly throughout lockdown and advances at the Land Registry meant documentation could be completed online so home buyers and developers could continue with house sales without hold-ups.

A particularly notable achievement was for one of our clients, Keepmoat Homes to deliver two pilot schemes in the North East and Midlands as part of the government’s flagship First Homes scheme – a brand new tenure of social housing to help first-time buyers onto the property ladder.

There can only be one winner on the night of the Newcomer of the Year award, but all those shortlisted should be extremely proud of their achievements - they are certainly the rising stars of the residential property industry. Good luck!