- Overview
- Significant Matters
Overview
Our Commercial Property Practice is at the forefront of real estate acquisition, development and finance across the length and breadth of the African continent and successfully safeguards the interests of all industry role players, whether they be developers, landlords, lenders, property funds or tenants.
Our team comprises a dynamic group of talented real estate legal practitioners situated in our various offices across the African continent.
Our geographical reach and our knowledge of the real estate industry throughout Africa, enable us to provide hands-on legal solutions across a wide array of multi-jurisdictional transactions, ensuring seamless collaboration and solutions to even the most complex of projects.
Our imperative is to provide industry role players with practical and cost-effective counsel throughout the property ’life cycle’, from structuring, acquisition, development, tenanting and financing, through to eventual disposal, drawing on the collective experience of some of Africa’s finest real estate legal practitioners.
- Structuring and planning: We recognise the pivotal role that careful structuring and planning plays in every successful real estate venture and offer the full spectrum of expert advice required at the outset of every real estate venture.
- Acquisitions and disposals: Both seller and purchaser have important interests that require safeguarding. We ensure that the interests of our principal (whether the seller or the purchaser) are protected in a practical and solutions-orientated manner.
- Development: Our acclaimed development experts have successfully assisted developers in launching multiple developments on time and within budget.
- Financing:We represent most of the leading real estate financiers across Africa and ensure that their interests are safeguarded when providing acquisition, development, term or restructuring finance to real estate investors, developers or real estate funds. We provide an integrated, end-to-end service. Our involvement commences with negotiating and preparing deal and term sheets and continues through drafting and settling the full suite of loan and security documentation, auditing underlying sale and lease agreements relevant to the venture being financed, attending to the registration of all registrable securities (whether notarial or mortgage bonds) and monitoring the fulfilment of advance pre-conditions. We also represent the interests of borrowers seeking acquisition, development, term or restructure finance and guide them through the negotiation and execution of the applicable financing and security documents in a way that they can commit with full knowledge of the liabilities they are assuming.
- Leasing:We represent the interests of many of the most influential property funds and developers across the African continent throughout the leasing process. We also represent the interests of numerous retailers across Africa in ensuring that their interests, as tenants, and the specific needs of their businesses, are safeguarded in the lease negotiation and preparation process.
- Litigation: Our real estate experts work with our specialist dispute resolution lawyers to offer a cost-effective, practical and solutions-based dispute resolution service in respect of real estate disputes.
Chambers and Partners, 2022
‘houses an esteemed real estate department equipped to support infrastructure, office, retail, hotel and residential developers across the full gamut of real estate law’
‘significant experience acting for banks and other financial institutions on the financing and refinancing of property and developments, the firm offers further experience advising on sales and acquisitions. The team is also sought out for its counsel on retail and residential development’
Legal 500, 2021
‘represents a large number of banks, developers, and listed and unlisted property funds, in financing acquisitions, disposals and the development of commercial, industrial and retail real estate in South Africa and beyond.
‘extensive record in lease and development lease agreements for both landlords and tenants, and frequently conducts real estate due diligence investigations linked to corporate transactions’
recognised leader in master plan real estate projects’
‘actively engaged in land rights connected to projects work and has a significant market share of conservation work in Kenya’