Home / Europe / United Kingdom / Real Estate / Real Estate Finance

Real Estate Finance

Back to Real Estate

The real estate finance market has undergone significant change in recent years, with increased regulation, the entrance of more categories of lenders and changes to documentation. At CMS, we understand the challenges that these changes pose for you, having acted for lenders, developers, borrowers, sponsors, hedge counterparties and others on a wide range of investment and development transactions.

We helped to create the industry standard documentation on which most deals are based, and have helped clients like you fund assets such as commercial and residential real estate, ground rent investments, hotels, healthcare assets, theatres, logistics portfolios, shopping centres, house building and supermarket developments.

As an international law firm with cross-border transactional experience, our cohesive international team is able to deliver complex trans-European property portfolio financings.

Our clients include funds, property companies, family offices, universities and UK and international banks and financial institutions, and we are experienced in acting for both senior and mezzanine lenders.

“The team are very responsive and proactive and act as an extra limb. They help us practically and with all aspects of the deals.”

Chambers UK 2022, Real Estate Finance

"They are very easy to work with, proactive and personable. We have excellent communications with them and they help matters go smoothly."

Chambers UK, 2016
10/11/2023
Driving sustainability in real estate and construction
Contributing to the fight against climate change and creating social value are now priorities for the real estate and construction sectors.   The long-term nature of the built environment means that resilience and sustainability should be considered at every stage if buildings are to be environmentally and socially responsible. This brings both opportunities and challenges for the businesses that create, own or maintain it. They must consider the evolving technical, regulatory and market landscape, to ensure that their investments are future-proofed commercially, as well as environmentally and socially. This section of Bandwidth looks at some of the ESG issues that confront developers and property owners, and how they can incorporate practical solutions into their businesses.
Highlights of our experience in Real Estate Finance in the UK
Lenders Aareal Bank AG on the financing of the corporate acquisition by SGRF and a privately held hospitality group of a  portfolio of hotels across Germany, France, Spain, Luxembourg and Switzer­land. Deutsche...
Law-Now: Real Estate Finance
Visit Law-Now for legal know-how and commentary

Feed

20/02/2024
MEES - why are local authorities failing to enforce?
The UK government has a continued drive and commitment to reach net zero emissions by 2050. Yet as highlighted in the first of this series of publications, “MEES – are the regulations working?” the risk of MEES enforcement is low. Against a hotly discussed political backdrop, why is it that local authorities are continually failing to enforce the MEES regulations? Left alone, the existing approach serves to undermine the UK’s net zero strategy.
28/06/2023
Tomorrow
Taking the long view Even in challenging times, real estate investors continue to have a strong degree of confidence in the future of the sector.
14/06/2023
Sustainable offices and EPC requirements
Investors may be moving towards the view that making offices sustainable does not necessarily equate to higher costs for occupiers.
14/06/2023
London
The majority of UK real estate professionals continue to believe that London is overvalued. As our chart shows, this is very much business as usual. Over the past eight years, only 2021 - when investors began to wonder what a post-covid market might look like - has challenged the status quo. Even then, what we saw was only a significant narrowing of the gap, not a reversal. In this year’s polling, 62% of our respondents feel London is overvalued, as opposed to 6% who believe it is undervalued. These are the most bearish numbers we have seen since pre‑Brexit days.
14/06/2023
Infographic
  
14/06/2023
The view from the UK
Every year we ask a cross-section of leading UK real estate professionals for their views on the market. This year we polled 270 experts, including 62 investors and 54 developers. In many ways they share the outlook of the global investors we surveyed, with long-term confidence tempered by short-term concerns. Overall, 38% reported feeling optimistic about the market, while 34% describe themselves as neutral and 28% are pessimistic. Although positive, this take on the market is unsurprisingly more cautious than the one we found 12 months ago, with sentiment falling back to levels last seen at the beginning of the pandemic as the more bullish outlook of the past two years recedes.
14/06/2023
Global cities
As our chart shows, the genuinely ‘global’ cities remain the most appealing (albeit by slim margins), with the top four slots going to London, Paris, Tokyo and New York.
14/06/2023
The big picture
Despite a difficult year and an uncertain outlook, we found strong underlying positives among investors globally.
06/06/2023
Technology
Many in the real estate industry are keen to embrace technological innovations, including the latest green technologies.
06/06/2023
Future Planning?
One thing nearly all our UK respondents agree on is that the planning system is not working and needs investment. A massive 90% say the system is slowing down real estate development, while 93% reckon it is under-resourced.
06/06/2023
Finance
There is general agreement that, in the short term, financing is getting harder – with 70% of UK real estate professionals believing it will become more difficult to access debt over the next 12 months.
06/06/2023
Sustainability