Real Estate

Building on your ambitions

Residential, commercial or industrial. Buildings, land or both. Our experienced real estate practice covers all the bases from transactions, leases, developments, zoning and construction laws, and financing through to sale and lease backs, regulatory, environmental, labelling and other matters. We’ll give you the confidence to make the most of opportunities, while managing risk.

Real estate developments also form a large part of our portfolio alongside the architect and contractor agreements that make sure projects go to plan on time and on budget. Our proven real estate specialists are as comfortable providing advice and support to private clients as they are to commercial users, institutional investors and finance parties. And as well as being experts in real estate investment funds, rating agencies and the public sector, they’re also fluent in the growing field of ESG-related law.

  • Expertise

    • Transactional real estate – including direct or indirect single asset or portfolio acquisitions or sales, sale-and-lease-back transactions, share deals and hospitality deals, commercial or residential real estate securitisation
    • Real estate due diligences
    • Real estate development projects
    • Real estate architect and contractor agreements – including general or total contractor, planning arrangements, project agreements, SIA agreements, Fidic
    • Commercial and residential leases (landlord and tenant representation)
    • Environmental matters 
    • Energy and infrastructure
    • ESG-related matters – including green buildings and leases, green financing, reporting and disclosure, ESG-certificates, labelling of properties
    • Permits for acquisitions of real estate by persons abroad (Lex Koller)
    • Real estate finance including acquisition financing/refinancing and mortgages
    • Property and facility management
    • Real estate related litigation and arbitration
    • Real estate regulatory for regulated investors (such as pension funds and insurers)
    • Second home-related aspects
    • Digital real estate – including building information modelling (BIM)
    • Real estate tax
  • RELATED SECTORS

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Publications

  • 16 Jan 2025

    Commentary to Art. 263 SCO: Transfer of a commercial lease to a third party: refusal for good cause

    in: Swiss Contract Law, January 2025

  • 27 Jun 2024

    Marchés in-house, quasi in-house, in-state et autres concepts interpellants

    in: Zufferey/Beyeler/Scherler (eds), Aktuelles Vergaberecht 2024/Marchés publics 2024, Zurich Genève 2024, pp. 195-232.

Stories

We appreciate Lenz & Staehelin's market knowledge and strong local network and national presence. The team goes the extra mile.

Chambers & Partners, 2025

Lenz & Staehelin have really strong expertise in the real estate area and excellent knowledge. The lawyers are very clever and have the ability to handle complex and sophisticated matters.

Chambers & Partners, 2025

The team have an excellent understanding of complex and sizeable real estate transactions. They are proactive and solutions-oriented.

Chambers & Partners, 2024

The combination of the quality of work, the speed and the understanding of the client’s needs are unique.

The Legal 500, 2024

Our organisation has been working for a very long period of time with Lenz&Staehelin and they have been instrumental in the negotiation of the contractual terms of a very important project for our Group. Their knowledge and insight on the real estate market in Switzerland has been extremely valuable as well as their high level of legal expertise. Finally, the firm has been able to allocate resources extremely quickly to our project which was key for its success.

The Legal 500, 2024

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