REAL ESTATE STRUCTURES UNIT
The Real Estate Structures Unit draws on the firm’s expertise across a number of practice groups to provide clients with an integrated approach to the structuring of real estate transactions. It combines real estate experience and knowledge with corporate, finance and taxation skills.
The team has particular expertise in indirect property investment, and in setting up creative structures for the joint ownership of property and which allow for the liquidity of the investors’ interests. With increasing demand for joint participation in high value investment property, techniques more normally associated with corporate transactions are increasingly used to deal with the acquisition, risk allocation, control and ownership of real estate. These techniques are equally applicable to those seeking to establish a real estate fund for marketing to a wide range of investors as they are to a single or small group of identified investors looking to set up a flexible ownership structure which recognises their specific tax profile and/or allows one investor to exit before the others.
In the current challenging market conditions, with investors naturally cautious and bank finance difficult to obtain, opportunities still exist for the acquisition of distressed and competitively priced real estate assets which could be of interest to investors who already have finance available. It is also a good time to be establishing structures so as to be ready to invest quickly when market conditions begin to improve.
Structures on which the Real Estate Structures Unit has advised include:
- English and Scottish Limited Partnerships
- Onshore Co-ownership Trusts
- Offshore Unit Trusts
- Exempt Onshore Unit Trusts
- Limited Liability Partnerships
The Real Estate Structures Unit advises throughout the process, ensuring a commercial approach and the correct balance between risk, reward, control and taxation, in whichever structure is adopted. Full regard is had to market practice to ensure familiarity of the adopted structure to investors, with the benefit of enhanced liquidity where required. Clients include institutional and overseas investors and the promoters and managers of real estate funds. The Unit advises on structures for all real estate asset classes, both in the UK and offshore.