Forbes Solicitors property team surpasses £200m in 12 months
The Lancashire-headquartered law firm has a team of 60 professionals across its residential, housing and commercial property sectors. These dedicated specialists enable Forbes Solicitors to meet growing demand for mixed-use property developments, which it has seen rise by 30% in wake of the pandemic.
Partner Adam Bromley heads up the Forbes Property team, supported by sector heads including Richard Clithero, Michelle Thompson, Matthew Jones, Helen Marsh and Catherine Kennedy.
“The pandemic has changed the way people live and work, which is seeing developers and landlords rethink property schemes”, explains Adam Bromley. “This is leading to a rise in hybrid residential and commercial developments that bring together many different facilities such as leisure, hospitality, work, health and wellbeing, retail, green spaces and parking.
“These schemes increasingly blur the boundaries between traditional residential, housing and commercial property transactions, and can cause increased complexities. Our team’s shared wealth of varied experience enables us to rise to any challenge. We’re able to provide clients with a highly experienced resource of property specialists that helps to fulfil their plans and achieve their ambitions.”
During the past year, Forbes has acted for a range of developers, landlords and joint public-private sector ventures across the UK. This has seen the Forbes Property team support plans for £200m of property (based on market value), with £125m worth of properties already in the pipeline for the next 12 months.
Adam added: “We’ve advised on the development and completion of hundreds of plots and a wide variety of schemes during the last year and no two transactions are the same. There’s been a real mix in plans, from schemes involving local authorities, the NHS and social housing, to schemes turning derelict sites into light industrial units for start-ups and co-working spaces - a further sign of trends emerging from the impacts of COVID and lockdowns.
“These deals naturally bring together our different property sector experience, with the strength in depth of our 60-strong Property team ever more in demand.
“There’s so much happening in the property market, and it looks like there’s an exciting year ahead. Affordable housing continues to rank highly for Government, big banks are increasingly moving into the buy-to-let market and enterprising developers will continue to rethink urban spaces. This should fuel investment in the regeneration of brownfield and neglected sites, and lead to more innovative mixed-use schemes for living, working and leisure time.
“We have committed transactions for £125m worth of property in the next 12 months and all the signs suggest this will grow further.”
Forbes Solicitors is hosting a webinar on 10th November looking at bridging the gap between private developers and registered providers of housing. Click here for further information.
