Real Estate & Property

Leading the market

Our market-leading Real Estate & Property team is the go-to team for high value and complex real estate transactions and projects in New Zealand.

Property plays a significant role in every corporate or business, whether it is reimagining a head office that can communicate identity, establishing a new suburb for growing families or a retirement village for people to enjoy in their golden years, developing industrial estates for hundreds of employees, planting orchards or rearing livestock, building hospitals or providing essential infrastructure, New Zealanders live, work, play and shop in the places and spaces built by our clients.

We are incredibly proud to be consistently trusted by those clients to support them on their most important projects and have worked on many of the market leading investment and development projects shaping the landscape of Aoteoroa.

We are deliberately sought out for our full-service capabilities across all transactional and project requirements. We advise on a broad spectrum of commercial real estate and property work across the industrial, office, retail, hotel, infrastructure and agricultural and forestry sectors. We act for both landlords and occupiers, property investors and developers (including leading domestic and overseas funds and property institutions), property owners and builders, in both the private and public sectors.

Our combination of market knowledge, commercial focus, and technical expertise enables us to assist clients though the full life-cycle of a project, from structuring through acquisition, development, subdivision, construction, leasing and divestment. We work closely with other experts across the firm, including our:

Experience

Our experience includes advising:

Industrial

• Goodman Property Trust on the acquisition, development and divestment of industrial properties in its portfolio, including the acquisition and development of Highbrook Business Park and the former Villa Maria site in Mangere.
• Blackrock and funds managed by it on the acquisition of a portfolio of industrial assets.
• JP Morgan on the establishment of Industre, its industrial property joint venture with Stride.
• Logos and its joint venture partners (AustralianSuper and GIC) on the acquisition and development of Wiri Logistics Estate and Otahuhu Logistics Estate.
• Spark New Zealand Trading Limited in connection with its acquisition of a site in Dairy Flat for the purposes of developing a hyperscale data centre campus.

Retail

• Auckland International Airport on the leasing of its Mānawa Bay outlet store.
• Woolworths on its portfolio of supermarket properties across New Zealand.
• Charter Hall on the acquisition of two significant petrol station portfolios across New Zealand.
• Kiwi Property Group on the subdivision and sale of land adjacent to Sylvia Park to Ingka Group for the development of its flagship IKEA store in New Zealand.
• Winton in its acquisition of the property and business assets of the marina, hardstand and dry stack facility known as Pier 21. 

Office

• Precinct on its development of Commercial Bay, Auckland and the sale of the ANZ Centre, Auckland.
• Precinct on its proposed mixed use redevelopment of the Downtown Carpark site in Auckland.
• A joint venture of Precinct and PAG in relation to its acquisition of two office buildings in Quay Park, Auckland and the associated structuring (including formation of a JV with Ngati Whatua).
• Fonterra, Genesis, Fidelity, Intellihub and Lion in their head office relocations.
• Auckland International Airport on its development of The Landing business and industrial park.
• Kiwi Property on its joint venture with Tainui in relation to Centre Place North, Hamilton, and its sale of the Majestic Centre, Wellington.
• Oyster on the acquisition, leasing and divestment of a number assets under management.
• PSPIB/CPPIB Waiheke Inc. on the divestment of the commercial office buildings at 385 Queen Street and 51 Shortland Street, Auckland.

Residential

• New Zealand Superfund on its residential development joint venture with Classic Homes.
• NZ Propco on its acquisition of the Todd Property Group assets.
• Winton Land on its residential land developments at Wynyard Quarter, Hobsonville Point, Cromwell, Wanaka and Matarangi. 
• Residential and mixed-use property developer, Templeton Group, in relation to its acquisition and financing of residential led schemes at Long Bay and Stonefields.
• Precinct on its proposed mixed-use redevelopment of the Downtown Carpark site in Auckland.

Student Accommodation

• Pamoja Capital SA in relation to its acquisition and development of a number of student accommodation facilities across Auckland.
• Advising Cedar Pacific on its acquisition of a number of facilities at the Canterbury University.

Projects

• KiwiRail on the Wellington and Waitohi Picton terminals and potential redevelopment and property matters regarding rail land throughout New Zealand.
• Watercare on a range of major water and wastewater infrastructure development projects, including the Central Interceptor project, as well as policy reform and compulsory acquisition.

Forestry, Horticulture and Agriculture

• A wholly owned subsidiary of Munich Reinsurance, in relation to the acquisition and management of multiple of forestry interests (including existing estates and farm to forest conversions) within New Zealand.
• A private equity firm on the establishment and expansion of a portfolio of broiler chicken farms across the North and South Island.
• ROC Asset Management with the acquisition of a 25% stake in the farming and forestry assets of listed company New Zealand Rural Land Company Limited.
• T&G Global Limited on various disposals and leaseback arrangements for orchards and warehousing throughout New Zealand.

Hotels, Tourism and Entertainment

• SkyCity on its property portfolio, including the development of the New Zealand International Convention Centre and Horizon Hotel.
• Auckland International Airport on its duty free and terminal retail licence arrangements.
• Stamford Group on the sale of the property and business it operated at the Stamford Plaza Hotel, Auckland to a consortium comprising the CP Group, in association with Alvarium Investments and Archipelago Group.
• A joint venture between Auckland International Airport and Tainui on the hotel management agreements with Accor for the Pullman and Novotel hotels at Auckland International Airport.
• Advised the lenders financing the development of a six-star hotel in Queenstown, including advising on potential exit strategies and enforcing security.

Retirement and healthcare

• Summerset on multiple acquisitions of land for the development of its retirement village portfolio.