About Stephen
With some forty years’ experience of commercial real estate and a variety of property law issues, I provide prompt and pragmatic commercially focussed advice to my clients, many of them of long standing.
Stephen undertakes a broad range of real estate work acting for tenants, landlords, buyers, developers and property users.
He has extensive experience relating to the negotiation of business leases and rent review. Other areas of expertise include planning agreements, commercial and residential development and enfranchisement.
Stephen has written articles on real estate fraud in relation to the registration of land and on the definition of a house for the purposes of leasehold enfranchisement. His article on failure to complete auction contracts is one of the most frequently visited articles on Russell-Cooke’s website. He has conducted internal and client seminars on a wide range of topics.
He trained at Russell-Cooke, becoming a partner of the firm in 1977
Experience
- Leading a team of property lawyers in a number of leasehold shop property acquisitions for a major high street trader
- A tripartite deal for the acquisition of a substantial Knightsbridge leasehold property, assigning the contract to the freeholder in return for a development agreement for the joint development of the property and a lease back of two units and subsequent sale on of those units, one by put and call option
- Acting on the acquisition of a contaminated site and negotiating a complex planning agreement, preparing a scheme for disposal and dealing with a mixture of freehold and leasehold sales of mixed use development including offices, restaurants, live-work units, flats and houseboats
- Negotiating a variation and extension of restaurant lease and simultaneous assignment of the original and reversionary leases
- Advising on a conditional contract for sale of a potential residential development site which was dependent on two tiers of planning conditions based on separate planning applications and appeals
- Completed contracts on a back to back transaction, involving four parties, moving tenants around within an industrial estate and also acted on a multi-million pound complex sale of a multi-let mixed use leasehold site to a major pension fund
- Acting on the acquisition of a residential development site with a particularly complex title with multiple indemnity insurance policies and presenting that title to unit buyers’ solicitors to enable off-plan unit sales to exchange without delay
- Dealing successfully with freehold disposal of completed residential development despite flat owners exercising their Landlord and Tenant Act 1987 rights
- High-end residential purchases for recommended clients
Memberships
- Member of the South London Law Society
- Chair of Dr Johnson's House Trust
- Member of the Commercial Real Estate Legal Association (CRELA)
