Alistair joined Thrings in 2021, having previously worked at national and boutique property firms in Manchester. His main area of focus is Development of Land working with residential and commercial developers, land promoters and land owners. He advises commercial clients on all stages of the lifecycle of commercial property assets from acquisition, development and funding through to disposals and occupational leases.
Alistair ensures that he understands all parties’ commercial objectives so as to reach a consensus on transaction terms early on, rather than becoming entrenched and seeking to ‘points-score’. He also prides himself in his ability to thoroughly research and resolve problematic title issues.
Alistair has a sound working knowledge of construction, planning and property litigation issues enabling him to collaborate effectively with specialists in these areas. Alistair also takes time to get to know the inner-workings of his client’s businesses and their other advisers – ensuring effective communications and decision making processes.
Development of Land – Residential
Alistair advises house-builders and developers on site-acquisitions via options and conditional contracts, often involving complex planning, valuation and infrastructure provisions. He retains a key role in property due diligence ensuring that material issues are flagged and mitigated at an early stage. Post-acquisition, Alistair remains involved with infrastructure agreements (e.g section 38 and section 104 agreements) and estate set-up leading into to handover to the firm’s dedicated plot sales team.
Alistair has extensive experience acting for land promoters in respect of promotion agreements.
Alistair also acts for land owners selling land for development and entering into planning promotion agreements and is able to provide sensible and pragmatic advice based on his in-depth knowledge and experience in the sector.
Development of Land – Commercial
Alistair has extensive experience acting on behalf of commercial developers on all stages of commercial developments projects including: title due diligence; site acquisition contracts and options; agreements for lease for pre-lets; infrastructure issues; development and funding agreements; estate/service charge set-up and disposals.
Alistair has worked on multi-million pound development projects in the logistics, industrial and retail sectors.
Landlord and Tenant
Alistair acts for both landlords and tenants in connection with commercial lease negotiations and has a wealth of experience dealing with high value leases of strategically important premises. His approach to lease negotiation is to try to achieve a reasonable balance between both parties so that there is an institutionally acceptable lease in place, but which meets the tenant’s operational requirements.
Alistair has worked closely with corporate clients to produce, maintain and adhere to standardised lease requirements across lease portfolios.
Alistair has experience of lease-renewals under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954, closely collaborating with property litigation colleagues in relation to court procedure, witness statements and deadlines.
Acting for housing and development consultancy in relation to a contract and transfer for purchase of a site and a back-to-back contract and transfer for the sub-sale, to a housing association. This site had a number of title issues which Alistair proactively mitigated via meetings and discussions with the highways authority in relation to adoption of the intended estate roads, assessing title insurance sourced by the seller in relation to land in unknown ownership (which was critical to the scheme), overseeing the surrender of part of a commercial lease affecting part of the site and negotiating a release of a restrictive covenant affecting another part of the site.
Dealing with a complex site sale contract to a national house-builder on behalf of a land promoter. The contract contained complex provisions or deductions from the price to account for abnormal site conditions and the coming into force of The Future Homes Standard changes to the Building Regulations. The contract also contained overage payable in the event the housebuilder obtained detailed consent for more than 60 homes.
Acting on an £18.5M acquisition of greenfield site in for the property development arm of a logistics operator involving:
Drafting and negotiating the contract and transfer and a supplemental option to acquire a second plot of land for potential use for biodiversity offsetting purposes;
Proactively working to mitigate and solve title issues through dialogue with Highways England, local authority officers and title insurers; and
Providing input to the working group undertaking route-proving study for an electricity supply route from a primary sub-station c.2 miles away.
Acquisition, forward commitment funding and development, sale and lease-back project for a logistics company with multiple aspects/phases including:
Advising on the transaction structure and heads of terms;
Negotiating a contract and transfer for the purchase of the site;
Drafting and negotiating a contract and transfer for sale of part of the site to an investor;
Preparing an estate service charge deed and incorporation of a management company;
Drafting and negotiating a development agreement providing for the construction of the building and payment of a development fee of c.£50 million upon practical completion;
Drafting and negotiating an agreement for lease requiring the client to enter into a lease of the completed building; and
Close-collaboration throughout with colleagues in the planning, construction and tax specialisms and the client’s own project team.
Acting for administrators on the disposal of a partially completed apartment development scheme following the insolvency of the developer. Close collaboration with the Restructuring and Insolvency Team to prepare and agree a sale contract with bespoke conditionality around the requirement to obtain a high court order to allow the sale of the property free from noted ‘off-plan’ sale contracts and the removal of the agreed and unilateral notices from the sale contract.
Handling a portfolio of lease transactions acting for an international logistics operator client in its capacity as tenant – often involving new buildings with complex agreements for lease conditional on planning providing for the landlord to construct the building and grant a lease on practical completion. These transactions were time-critical and involved an in depth understanding of the client’s operational and developer’s build programmes.