Gowling WLG

Real Estate; Development & Regeneration; Healthcare & Retirement Living; Investment; Private Rented Sector; Residential Development; Social Housing; Student Accommodation

Legal Director

Sally Farrall is a Legal Director in Gowling WLG's Real Estate Group and leads the Social/Affordable Housing Investment team. She has been ranked for Social Housing by Legal 500 since 2021.

She has many years’ experience of a wide variety of major property projects, acting for private sector landowners, commercial developers and investors, house builders, registered providers of social housing and public sector bodies. Over the last few years Sally has specialised in acting for investors into the social/affordable housing market, using both corporate and asset structuring models, forward funding and forward purchasing, and for registered providers of social housing on complex development projects, including deal structuring and development agreements.

She has been working with major players in the supported living investment market since its earliest days and was heavily involved in the initial structuring of the product – including devising lease terms which avoid difficulties over enfranchisement, and the terms of voids agreements, voids insurance and nominations agreements.

Sally's clients include Fox Hound Capital, LaSalle Investment Management, Legal & General Affordable Homes, MSS Communities Fund, RCM Neo, Sanctuary Group and Triple Point Social Housing REIT.

Experience 

Advising Triple Point Social Housing REIT on all aspects of its real estate and debt-raise legal work since launch. For example, in response to concerns which the Regulator of Social Housing has raised in relation to the leasehold investment model, Sally has worked with Triple Point to draft and stress-test ground-breaking risk-sharing provisions and to manage the retrospective application of these provisions to all existing leases in the REIT portfolio. Advising Fox Hound Capital on the acquisition of large portfolios of residential properties and their onward sale to a fund for conversion and use as homelessness accommodation, and acting for the fund in raising debt on the assets. This has included devising and implementing a process that allowed multiple residential properties to be acquired simultaneously from unrelated landowners, with a same day sale to an investor using a corporate wrapper. Advising Legal & General Affordable Homes in relation to a wide range of development matters (both land-led, s106 and open market acquisitions at turnkey or golden brick stage), including project managing the legal due diligence process on the bulk acquisition of market housing from a major house builder for onward shared ownership sale. Working with Sanctuary Group on the delivery of its Homes England and GLA development programmes, including acquisition, funding, tax and structuring and planning and infrastructure. For example, Sally has been advising Swan Housing, part of the Sanctuary Group, on the regeneration of the Crayland Housing Estate in Basildon to secure a new sustainable community neighbourhood in partnership with Homes England and Basildon Borough Council. Acting for BAE Systems Pension Funds on its forward funding of numerous new-build specialised supported housing schemes and subsequently on the sale of the completed schemes to alternative investors.

English