A tenant on the fifteenth floor of a tower near Bishopsgate wants to give back half its space. Whether it can depends on a break clause drafted a decade ago, on whether every condition attached to it has been met to the letter, and on the dilapidations bill that will follow. Property law in the City of London is almost entirely commercial: office leases and their renewals under the 1954 Act, rent reviews, service charges across multi-let buildings, the fit-out licences and reinstatement obligations that come with them, and the planning and construction work that keeps adding to the eastern cluster of towers. Retail and hospitality units from Leadenhall Market to Cheapside bring the same questions on a smaller scale.
Residential work is small but distinctive. The Barbican, Golden Lane and Middlesex Street estates are owned by the City of London Corporation, which grants long leases and acts as landlord, so conveyancing there means checking the lease, the service charge accounts and the Corporation's consent requirements for alterations in a listed estate. The newer blocks around Aldgate and Tower Hill raise building safety, ground rent and estate charge questions, and some are let short-term in breach of their leases. Possession and other county court claims from the City are heard at the Mayor's and City of London Court beside Guildhall, and the specialist business courts in the Rolls Building take the big landlord and tenant disputes.
Office-to-residential conversion has reached the City too, with the Corporation weighing housing against its wish to keep the Square Mile a business district, and solicitors advise on the planning side of both.
Conveyancing fees are usually fixed; commercial lease negotiations, dilapidations and litigation are hourly.
Property firms serving the City of London are listed below, verified first. See commercial property law, what conveyancing involves, landlord and tenant law and the general guide to property solicitors; for residential matters across the capital see property solicitors in London.
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