Rachel Kerr

Rachel Kerr helps clients to maximise their property investments and navigate their way through complex commercial acquisitions and developments. She does this by quickly 'getting under the skin' of transactions to effectively meet clients' commercial needs through the identification and provision of practical legal solutions.

Rachel acts for both investors and developers on a wide range of commercial property matters including:

• investment portfolio sales and acquisitions
• asset management matters prior to redevelopment and advice in relation to development schemes
• shopping centre acquisitions
• sales and management
• redevelopment schemes including hotels, retail and mixed-residential.

Her five years at the firm, working in the biggest team in the real estate department, has given me the opportunity to work on a large number of varied and diverse commercial property transactions covering all aspects of investment and development work.

She particularly enjoys property due diligence including title and leasehold analysis in order to assist clients' understanding of the assets they are purchasing and/or looking to develop. However, the most challenging yet enjoyable part of her job is applying that detail in a practical fashion so that every client has a clear understanding of the risks involved and the solutions available to them in light of those risks.

Key to this is having a clear understanding of each client's commercial goals and needs and she therefore works hard to build up strong client relationships ensuring that client service is just as important as the quality of work she delivers. The complexity of the transactions the commercial investment and development team deals with means that she can confidently apply the skills she has acquired in working on investment and development transactions across many real estate sectors including investment, offices and shopping centres.

Highlights

Leading the property due diligence element of Northwood Investor LLC's £635 million acquisition of the Highcross Fund/portfolio which comprises more than 7.1 million square feet of office and industrial properties throughout the UK.

This was a demanding job both in terms of the amount of properties and timescales involved. It was Rachel's responsibility to head up the internal team to ensure that the due diligence was carried out in a timely and effective fashion and act as the key client contract throughout the job. The sheer size of the transaction meant that a number of law firms were involved and she demonstrated an ability to quickly build up strong relationships with Northwood's other corporate advisers to deliver a result that the client was delighted with.

Clients

I act for a number of UK and US based investment and pension funds across a wide range of asset types including offices, retail, industrial and shopping centres as well as UK-based corporates such as GKN. My development clients are actively involved in a variety of developments including hotels, distribution warehouses and mixed commercial and residential schemes, including in the Private Rented Sector.