Living
Chris Xitsas
Chris is a Partner in the commercial real estate team and heads up the Living sector, with a broad range of experience across all aspects of investment, development and asset management work, as well as strategic land advice. Chris specialises in capital transactions and active management of office parks and retail assets, with a particular focus on the repositioning of town-centre shopping centres. He also has notable experience in site assembly, collaboration and land promotion agreements (acting for promoters and owners), and has a deep knowledge of development projects acting for institutional investors, student accommodation developers and educational institutions
Alex Watkins
Alex is a Senior Associate in the commercial property team with experience in all areas of commercial property work including landlord and tenant work, acquisitions and disposals and property management work.
Alexander Hall
Alexander is an Associate in the commercial real estate team at Maples Teesdale. Alexander has experience advising a wide range of British and international clients on non-contentious commercial property transactions. These deals have encompassed landlord & tenant work, acquisitions & disposals and real estate finance.
Annie Sahakian
Annie is an Associate in the real estate finance team, acting for borrowers and lenders on secured lending transactions. Annie assists with drafting and negotiating loan agreements, security documents and corporate authorisations to facilitate a range of high value investment and development transactions.
Declan Power
Declan is Head of Real Estate at Maples Teesdale and is one of the UK’s leading real estate development lawyers working on high profile projects in the offices, industrial/logistics, town centre repositioning, and living sectors, for both developers and institutional funders.
Declan's development experience includes retail, offices, mixed use, student accommodation, PRS and industrial/distribution including forward funding, forward purchases, joint venture agreements, development agreements, rent sharing leases, construction aspects and warranties, rights of light, stopping up orders and planning. Declan has extensive experience of commercial property investment sales and purchases, including portfolio sales and purchases and sales and leasebacks. Declan is also experienced in commercial property asset management, including new lettings, lease renewals and lease regearings.
Diva Gaur
Diva is a trainee in the commercial real estate team. She provides support to the team with various tasks including legal research, the preparation and reviewing of legal documents, the management of deeds and client extranets.
Eleanor Crawford-Drake
Ellie is a corporate real estate Partner with experience in a broad range of transactions covering a number of jurisdictions and including the use of W&I insurance, various purchase price adjustments and tickets reaching $300m. She has significant experience in corporate acquisitions and disposals, ranging from single asset to multi-company portfolio transactions, establishing and managing joint ventures, acting for minority or majority shareholder investors and company management and restructuring.
Joanna Preece
Joanna is a partner in the construction team and has significant experience advising a wide range of clients on large development schemes, acquisitions and disposals, lettings and financings. She is a specialist in non-contentious construction documents, with significant experience across the full suite of construction documents. She has experience in major redevelopments and full refurbishments and construction aspects of investment transactions, across all real estate investment sectors and is equally comfortable advising clients with less experience throughout the whole development process. Jo has a detailed knowledge of working and liaising with clients and understanding their commercial requirements having completed a number of legal secondments to her clients throughout her career. Jo helps to lead the Maples Teesdale’s ESG Committee and has been participating in workshops looking at climate clauses run by The Chancery Lane Project, a group that brings lawyers from around the world together to collaborate to develop new contracts and model laws to help fight climate change in the built environment.
Laura Johnson
Laura is an Associate in the construction team at Maples Teesdale with experience in acquisitions, financings and development projects (new build and refurbishment) across a range of sectors including office, residential and hotels. Laura has experience drafting and negotiating a variety of construction documents including building contracts with bespoke schedule of amendments, consultancy appointments and collateral warranties.
Lucy Owen-Jones
Lucy is an Associate in the commercial real estate team at Maples Teesdale. Lucy has experience acting for a wide range of UK-based clients on non-contentious commercial property work, including acquisitions and disposals, landlord and tenant and real estate finance.
Manusri Prabhakar
Manusri is an Associate in our commercial real estate team at Maples Teesdale. She has experience in non-contentious commercial property work including landlord and tenant work, acquisitions and disposals and property management work acting for a variety of clients in the UK.
Robin Barnes
Robin is a Senior Associate in the Planning team. Robin has experience in all aspects of town and country planning and is a member of the Strategic Land & Development sector team.
Deals
- The Collective/Cheyne Real Estate – acting on a high rise development being undertaken by a JV comprising The Collective and Cheyne Real Estate for serviced apartments/hotel use at 8 Baltimore Wharf, with a GDV in excess of £170m.
- Maslow Capital – Advising in relation to a £17.5m loan facility to fund the development works at 33 Parkside, Coventry, Warwickshire to create a 262 unit student block of 67,566 sq. ft, with a gross development value of £30m. The development is adjacent to the 33-acre purpose-built University campus in the heart of the city centre.
- Fragrance Hotels – acted for a Singaporean based hotel investor called Fragrance in their acquisition of circa 10 hotels in a variety of locations including Bath, Liverpool and Manchester. The project in Liverpool involved the acquisition of a long lease from the City Council of the Municipal Building in Liverpool for conversion to use as a hotel. The Fragrance projects threw up a variety of planning complexities.
- Acquisitions and leasebacks of GP surgeries for private clients, and currently acting on purchase and leaseback of an ambulance station.
- Anglo Suisse Investments – Acting on the sale of two prime central London freehold buildings, 95 and 97 Harley Street, W1, (each let on a long lease guaranteed by HCA International) to Aberdeen Standard Investments. Both properties were recently refurbished to provide state-of-the-art facilities and cancer treatments at the cutting edge of medicine. The properties are on the western side of Harley Street, surrounded by some of the world’s most prestigious medical practices, including The Harley Street Clinic, The London Clinic and The Heart Hospital.
Team Services
The living asset class such as student accommodation and build-to-rent are expected to show the best financial performance in 2023, according to a new industry survey of BPF members, which was conducted by Ipsos in partnership with Grosvenor.
The results, gathered from over 100 UK property developers, funders and advisers, forecasts a split between ‘alternative’ and ‘traditional’ real estate asset performance over the next twelve months.
When asked to identify which three asset classes would outperform in 2023, almost half of respondents (47%) identified life sciences, 42% selected student accommodation, and 41% chose build-to-rent.
The key benefits of the alternative sector includes long leases, indexed rental uplifts, better covenants and the potential to diversify portfolios.
We advise on all aspects of alternative investment classes including:
- purpose built student accommodation (PBSA)
- build to rent (BTR)
- private rental sector (PRS)
- healthcare and life sciences
- later living and care homes
Our clients include property developers, investors, lenders and borrowers across these asset classes.