Real Estate Law

Specialists in Construction & Real Estate Law

Investing in real estate is lucrative, both for private individuals and for commercial or institutional investors. Whether you’re investing in your dream home or business premises or conducting a building sale or purchase – comprehensive legal advice from experienced real estate lawyers is crucial for the successful completion of your real estate transaction. As a seller or buyer, you need to be alert to legal risks that can only be managed effectively with the help of a specialist legal professional.

The reason for this lies in the interdisciplinary character of this area of law: in addition to traditional subdivisions such as property law, residential property law and tenancy law, it’s also important to consider aspects of liability law, family law, inheritance law, architect law and copyright law.

ZENK Rechtsanwälte provide comprehensive legal advice from a single source.

We are inspired by interesting architecture and engineering structures, which is why we have long made this area of law a particular focus. As a team of lawyers highly specialized in construction and real estate, we are happy to advise you on all associated legal matters – from the idea or purchase to planning and construction and finally to completion or sale.

In each project phase, you will be assigned an experienced personal point of contact to attend to your concerns. Our clients in real estate law include, in particular:

• Institutional investors
• Public and private owners
• Homeowners’ associations
• Architects
• Engineers
• Building contractors
• Building owners
• Commercial landlords
• Property managers
• Project managers

Consulting ZENK, you benefit not only from our in-depth legal expertise, but also from our knowledge of the financial aspects of real estate projects and their complex, interlocking mechanisms. It is precisely this comprehensive understanding that enables us to take a holistic view of your specific situation and thus to offer you individual legal advice in line with your interests at all times.

Real estate: the immovable. In actual fact, however, modern real estate is amazingly dynamic – and active management is central to the success of dynamic economic activity. In its capacity as a commercial product, real estate creates complex demands from a legal, tax-related and economic perspective. This challenge inspires us. At ZENK, we provide highly specialized advice on all aspects of real estate law.

Whether share deals, asset deals, forward deals, “sale and lease back”, purchases, sales or due diligence: we work with you to develop creative solutions and reliable strategies. We seek to determine the most appropriate form of real estate transaction and the best possible way to implement it.

Outstanding legal and economic expertise, a holistic approach and a passion for our work mean that you are assured a secure legal basis for your transactions and real estate activities.

The “temporary transfer of use of an object in return for payment” – so goes the matter-of-fact legal definition of tenancy law. “That can’t be so difficult,” one might think. In fact, there is hardly any other area of law with a comparable number of potential pitfalls, each of which can easily turn an intended action into its opposite.

At the same time, tenancy law has an economic significance that should not be underestimated: investment decisions in the real estate sector almost always depend on the evaluation of existing or potential tenancy agreements, their addenda and compliance with the written form. Even for companies who are not active in the real estate sector, an expertly-concluded, long-term binding rental agreement is the basis for and a crucial determiner of economic activity.

We draft, advise, review and negotiate more than 600 rental agreements every year.

Idea seeks capital and location, location seeks idea and capital, capital seeks idea and location: it couldn’t be simpler, right?

Unfortunately, this is not enough: the development of a real estate project is probably the most complex task that can arise in the context of real estate-related value creation.

Design of an urban planning concept, planning permission, project financing and raising of external capital, acquisition of land and buildings, preparation of land, management of the remediation of contaminated sites, selection and optimization of tax structures, construction of the property with various parties, tenant move-in and ultimately the commercial exploitation of the property: these are only a small selection of the legal issues to be resolved. Early and ongoing legal advice is essential for doing this – and it pays off. We’ll be by your side with a highly specialized team and an enthusiasm for exciting projects.

Diversification is a basic regulatory rule and means minimizing risks in order to achieve long-term profits. “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket,” one could also say, and that’s where we’re going: Our advisory competence is the legal and tax structuring of closed-end real estate investment assets, for which an independent market has firmly established itself in recent years, as well as the clarification of sales-specific questions.

Our clients include (capital) management companies, asset managers, consultants and service providers, distributors of fund products as well as professional and institutional investors. We offer you a legally compliant conception of closed public AIF, special AIF and real estate special funds and advise you in particular on the preparation of sales prospectuses and sales documentation. During the term, we support you in the management of the fund and advise you on all related regulatory issues.

How can I finally obtain acceptance? How do I deal with latecomers? What is part of common property, and what is not? Does it always need to be a fight? Can the property manager take care of things themselves, or is a resolution or even a written agreement required? There are a number of specific issues surrounding residential property and part ownership.

Seeking advice early can help – and we can provide it. If it’s already too late for preventative measures, we can help in this case, too. We know our way around. Formulating a declaration of division of ownership, managing the interaction of co-ownership, special ownership and partial ownership, acquiring residential property, or whatever else – you can rely on us.

The right facility management (FM) or building management (BM) is an essential factor in the maintaining the value of your property long-term. Operator responsibility, reporting and controlling duties, the details of remuneration – all this requires careful regulation.

Our long-standing clients include institutional investors, project developers and real estate companies with portfolios spanning the whole of Germany. We draft, review and negotiate FM contracts for these clients in a range of areas, including technical building management, infrastructure building management and commercial building management. We offer you legally compliant, tried-and-tested solutions that are suitable for the everyday resolution of all FM-specific legal issues.

Properties were said to be immovable. Today, real estate is surprisingly flexible.

Share deal, asset deal, forward deal or sale and lease back, purchase, sale or due diligence: In dialogue with you, we develop creative solutions and reliable strategies for the most suitable form of real estate transaction and its best possible implementation.

We provide highly specialised advice on all aspects of real estate law: excellent legal quality, economic understanding, our holistic approach and passion for our work create a secure legal basis for your transactions and real estate activities.

We are your independent partners with the utmost diligence

Acquisition of a company, purchase of shares in a company or real estate – due diligence is an integral part of every acquisition. We know the potential risks in the purchase and sale, uncover them, provide experienced and goal-oriented advice from the first exposé to the closing.

Our legal due diligence balances out information asymmetries and comprehensively analyses the target property. Whether in advance in the vendor due diligence or parallel to the technical investigation and purchase contract negotiation. In due diligence, existing legal risks are reliably identified for you, strengths and weaknesses of the property are disclosed and criteria for determining the value are objectively established and clearly presented.

Our interdisciplinary team will be happy to assist you with your next acquisition in order to achieve your goals efficiently and will also support you in the further course of the transaction.

Real estate agents are not particularly popular. Quite wrongly, we believe. The broker is an essential part of the real estate value chain. He leads the property to the capital, creates the link between investor and investment. Many players in the real estate industry live from this, not only the brokers.

At the same time, a lot of money is often at stake. The broker’s underlying service, on the other hand, is only recognizable to the broker’s client in rudimentary outline. This sometimes leads to the relationship between performance and consideration being questioned, whether wrongly or rightly. Most brokerage contracts do not take this into account sufficiently.

We structure contractual relationships in such a way that they are reliable and transparent. That creates trust. In the long run, it pays off.

But we can also do things differently: if a brokerage fee is wrongly demanded, we reject it. If a fee is wrongly not paid, we enforce the claim. Feel free to contact us, wherever the shoe pinches.

Diversification is a basic rule in asset management and means minimising risks in order to achieve long-term profits. Real estate is more than just an asset class. Active management is the central concept of dynamic economic activity. The economic object of real estate poses complex requirements from a legal, tax and economic point of view. This challenge inspires us.

From the idea to the investment decision to the implementation to the ongoing property management – we know the life cycles of real estate and your challenges on the economic level.

You benefit not only from our sound legal expertise and years of experience, but also from our knowledge of the financial aspects of real estate projects and the complex interlocking mechanisms of real estate-related value creation.

Whether it is the legal and tax structuring of closed-end real estate investments, the clarification of sales-specific issues, advice on acquisitions and sales, due diligence or legal issues of property management – our systematic approach means: we offer comprehensive understanding of your specific situation and holistic consideration for individual and interest-oriented legal advice.

Early and ongoing legal advice is essential. And it pays off for you. We are at your side with a highly specialised team and enthusiasm for exciting projects.

Our experienced advisors support you

A property is a hybrid asset – the land as a low-risk investment object, the management of which requires little effort, and the building, the management of which makes other demands. On this interface, the heritable building right offers exciting design possibilities that cannot be achieved with a sale: In addition to the pure use and income generation perspective, urban development interests, the preservation of possibilities to influence the use of the land and special financing issues are often of outstanding importance. Especially in times of scarcity of building land, it is important to find a modern use for areas that cannot be built on in any other way.

As an interdisciplinary team, we are familiar with the special legal issues and also have an in-depth economic understanding in order to exploit the potential offered by heritable building rights.

Investment and regulatory law advice is one of our core competences, enabling us to provide you with comprehensive advice on the conception and structuring of alternative investment funds (“AIF”). This includes, in particular, the conception, establishment, management and distribution of real estate funds, mostly in the form of so-called special AIFs within the meaning of the German Investment Code (KAGB). These are funds whose units may only be acquired by professional and semi-professional investors. In this context, we support you in the preparation of the various documentation required in the context of structuring an AIF, including in particular partnership agreements, trust agreements, accession documents as well as the General and Special Terms and Conditions of Investment.

We also support you in analysing existing fund and distribution structures and optimising them on this basis.

Our advice also includes investment and regulatory advice on real estate transactions, in the context of which we examine in particular the regulatory permissibility of the acquired assets or, in the context of an investment law due diligence, examine the extent to which the intended acquisition structure meets the applicable investment and regulatory requirements.