Real Estate

We provide counseling on all types of commercial real estate transactions, including acquisitions, dispositions, financing, construction, development, leasing and management of real estate. Our clients include lenders, borrowers, investors, developers and landlords/occupiers.

Furthermore, we also help our clients during the construction phase of a project, e.g. by drafting, reviewing and negotiating contracts with architects, engineers, contractors and other consultants.

Our clients told us that they appreciate in particular our ability to think outside the box which in one recent case has helped us to acquire a large piece of land in Japan, which was formerly regarded as impossible to acquire due to a lack of registration of the respective owners over the course of several generations. Appealing to certain old customs of oral division of estate resulted in the acknowledgement of tax-representatives as owners by METI as legal basis for the project.

General real estate advice that we give includes in particular advising on:

  • drafting, reviewing and negotiating real estate acquisitions trough asset or share deals including OpCo-/PropCo-transactions
  • title, survey and environmental due diligence
  • schemes to avoid real estate transfer tax being triggered (RETT-blocker structures)
  • setting-up of real estate funds
  • real estate financing including structuring and documentation of real estate mortgages and other securities
  • sale-and leaseback transactions
  • Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs)
  • project developments and joint development agreements including public and private infrastructure projects
  • land use entitlement approvals
  • environmental regulation of development projects
  • leasing and letting of buildings for office, retail and other commercial and industrial use

Our team includes lawyers fluent in Japanese, English, German, Chinese, Spanish and French. This allows us to read, understand and comment on documents in these languages without translation and we can also communicate in these languages.