Commercial Property

Our commercial property department works with business occupiers, property owners, SPVs, investors, management companies and asset managers on any issues they face through managing their property portfolios. We work closely with your other professional business and property advisers including surveyors, accountants, agents and design and works teams.

When you want to buy or sell a commercial property, let or take a lease of commercial premises, we provide you with the legal framework to do so and advise you on strategies to ensure that your business operations continue to run smoothly with the least possible disruption and the best possible protection.

We closely consider the context of your transactions and tailor our advice to your business requirements according to your investment and business occupational needs.

Our department specialises in landlord and tenant acquisitions, disposals, occupational restructuring, renewals and permissive licences across a wide spectrum of commercial property classes including offices, industrial premises, warehouse and distribution sites, retail, leisure and hospitality premises. We work collaboratively with our construction, real estate dispute resolution and corporate commercial colleagues to give that holistic, pragmatic and commercial advice you need, always with your best interests as our top priority.

Our department deals with all aspects of day-to-day portfolio management matters including the preparation, negotiation and completion of agreements for lease, leases and lease renewals, agreements for surrenders and surrenders and re-grants as well as all related management and permissive licences and associated documentation.

We guide you through the lifecycle of your landlord and tenant relationships and management of your leases which can involve the need to extend a business occupation, for works to be carried out to premises, for a lease to be varied so as to alter the level of rents, break dates or other terms, for the addition or reduction of premises being let, for a surrender or termination of a lease, for underletting of whole or part of premises, for assigning a lease and, to resolve disputes. At the same time, we factor in and advise you on your HMRC stamp duty land tax and Land Registry liabilities and obligations.

We also work hand-in-hand with our corporate commercial colleagues acting for domestic and international clients who require corporate structures to be created to enable commercial physical real estate assets and connected businesses to be operated and managed effectively by franchise agreements and associated concession legal frameworks, addressing issues relating to property, advertising, intellectual property rights, the regulation of franchising, and the application of UK and EU competition law.

Examples of commercial property experience include:

• Acting for commercial landlords and corporate occupiers dealing with a broad spectrum of complex and straightforward transactional matters including all aspects of commercial property landlord and tenant matters, acquisitions and disposals of freehold and leasehold properties of a commercial nature including industrial, office and retail, hospitality and, leisure industries.
• Acting for corporate clients assisting in share and business sale/acquisition transactions dealing with commercial property due diligence, property warranties and disclosure letters.
• Acting for private developers in connection with acquisition of commercial development sites conditional on planning and various other matters including highways and s106 agreements and unilateral undertakings, arranging funding for acquisition and development of sites, forward letting to food retail companies and forward selling to purchasers as investment focussed transactions including sub-sale, TOGC and SDLT considerations.
• Acting for a variety of individuals, high net worth individuals, property companies/SPVs and other UK and overseas investors and developers.
• Dealing with secured lending transactions from the borrower perspective, as single properties and multiple property portfolios including the preparation and negotiation of long form CLLS Certificates of Title (Seventh Edition 2016 update).
• Advising commercial investor client (owner of whole and occupier of part) in the sale of recently refurbished freehold multi-let 7 storey office building in the City of London, including two new commercial leases (one to a third party) as a condition of the sale.
• Acting for commercial investor client (high end car supplier) as borrower in a secured lending transaction on property matters in the preparation and negotiation of long form CLLS Certificates of Title (Seventh Edition 2016 update) with the lenders solicitors. The property portfolio comprised 22 property sites and work included managing and leading the 8-member team.
• Acting for commercial investor client (high end car supplier) in acquisition and funding of rural site for commercial redevelopment purposes requiring planning and overage considerations.
• Advising corporate law firm client on property matters for ultimate developer client including novating the pre-existing sale agreement and incorporating complex changes to accord with the top sale contract of part.
• Acting for commercial investor client (builders’ merchants) as borrower in the re-finance of its commercial property portfolio comprising five different property locations and multiple complex titles requiring the preparation and negotiation of long form CLLS Certificates of Title (Seventh Edition 2016 update); managing and leading the four-member team.
• Advising major plc nationwide infrastructure client on commercial property matters across England and Wales, as tenant (mainly) including office space, warehouse, waste distribution and railway sites, short- and long-term occupations, subletting, assigning, terminating and exercising breaks in their leases, regearing leases including those for their head office, always time critical impacting on the client financially and on their business operations.
• Advising a commercial investor client (builders’ merchants) on property management strategy and re-gearing existing commercial leases along with multiple title rectification aspects with a view to the client exploring future redevelopment for residential purposes.
• Advising a retail coffee house client on taking and re-gearing leases in the City of London and central London.
• Advising on commercial property matters for retail coffee house client in the share sale acquisition of other retail coffee entity following with assignments and regearing of existing leases and advising on the taking of new leases including index linked rent reviews, complex alienation and break option provisions with Covid/pandemic considerations.
• Advising gym retail client on taking leases of and fitting out various premises in the City of London and central London.
• Advising commercial tenant clients during and following the Covid pandemic to provide solutions to enable mitigation of rent and service charge liabilities along with sustaining their businesses in conjunction with real estate litigation colleagues.