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Residential Real Estate

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CMS’ Residential Real Estate practice has extensive experience and offers pro-active and tailored advice, handling a broad range of work for commercial clients.

Acting for investors, developers and clients with investment portfolios, we purchase, sell and manage commercial clients' UK residential needs.

We deal with redevelopments, financing and plot sales throughout the UK and Central London. We provide bespoke and integrated tax, construction and planning advice. 

We provide advice on all aspects of residential property transactions for commercial clients including:

  • Buying and selling individual properties and portfolios of properties. 
  • Site acquisition and subsequent development work.
  • Landlord and tenant transactions.
  • Management work.
  • Contentious and non-contentious enfranchisement work, collective enfranchisement actions, lease extensions and rights of first refusal.
  • Financing of acquisitions or refinancing of single assets or portfolios.
  • Student accommodation.

We can draw upon our various offices outside London located throughout the United Kingdom where a pool of resources and knowledge are located to assist in large scale property transactional work.

"The residential team, have for a number of years acted on behalf of our sales and acquisitions of Central London properties with a total value and excess of £435m. They have provided an exceptional level of service and we appreciate the level of professionalism and hard work supplied."

CEO, Property Investment Fund
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.
13/12/2023
MEES - are the regulations working?
MEES is a flagship policy to help the UK meet its net zero targets. MEES returns over 50million hits on Google, so it is undoubtedly a widely discussed piece of legislation that should play a major role in reducing the carbon footprint of the non-domestic property stock in the UK. But is there sufficient bite to these regulations? 
16/08/2017
Highlights of our Experience in Residential Real Estate in the UK
General sales and purchase transactions with lending requirements for various individual clients. Dealing with landlord and tenant issues and lease extensions. Site acquisitions at Kings Cross and Old...

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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.
31/01/2024
CMS strengthens Real Estate residential offering with partner appointment
International law firm CMS is strengthening its Real Estate practice with the appointment of Rebecca Moore, who joins the firm as partner from BCLP. Rebecca has a strong practice in the residential sector...
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
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
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
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
Other UK cities
Looking at the rest of the UK, Manchester still remains on top of our ranking of regional cities, popular with 58% of UK professionals.
06/06/2023
Asset classes
Given the strong demand/supply imbalance, it is no surprise to see ‘living’ asset classes take the top spots when professionals are asked which sectors they favour.
06/06/2023
Technology
Many in the real estate industry are keen to embrace technological innovations, including the latest green technologies.