Five questions to ask before a joint venture

A well-made joint venture aligns a landowner, a developer and a source of capital around a single outcome. A poorly made one does the opposite, binding parties whose interests were never truly shared.

The first question is the simplest: what does each party actually bring, and when? Land, money and delivery rarely arrive on the same timetable, and the structure should reflect that.

The second concerns control. Who decides, and on what; where are the reserved matters; and what happens in deadlock. The third concerns reward: how value is shared, and whether the split survives a change in cost or programme.

The fourth is about exit before anyone needs one. The fifth, and the one most often skipped, is whether the parties trust one another enough to proceed at all. The answer to that last question is worth more than any clause.