Harriet Forster

Harriet is a commercial property lawyer with a particular specialism in residential development.

She acts for major housebuilders, SME developers and investors on the acquisition, financing and disposal of development sites. Harriet also has extensive experience of strategic land transactions, such as promotion and option agreements. She regularly advises both landowners and developers in relation to residential and commercial schemes.

Alongside this, she also undertakes mainstream commercial property work, acting primarily for developers, investors and charities on the acquisition, letting, management and disposal of office, retail and mixed-use assets.

• Acting for residential developers on the acquisition and financing of multiple development parcels on various large-scale consortium sites, including the negotiation of complex overage/deferred payment provisions and site-wide arrangements for the provision of infrastructure and regulation of development.
• Acting on a subject to planning acquisition of a large development site from two separate landowners, including overage, deferred payments and associated security, and the acquisition of additional rights over adjoining third party land to enable development.
• Acting for a residential developer taking an option over an approximately 200-acre site held by multiple landowners.
• Acting for a landowner on a subject to planning option agreement for commercial development, including access agreements over third party land and a collaboration agreement with a former landowner.
• Acting for a private property company on the acquisition of a development site in west London
• Advising a charitable trust on the disposal of a City office building that formed part of the trust’s investment portfolio, including buying in two long leasehold interests and then sub-selling these along with the freehold reversion for redevelopment.