Driving successful real estate investments and transactions

We are a single source of legal advice for the real estate, tax, capital markets, and related needs of many of the world’s leading real estate investors, investment advisors, and developers.

We can advise and support you through all stages of real estate investments and transactions: our real estate lawyers understand the issues so we can get your deals completed efficiently. Every week, we close deals around the world that range from single assets to global portfolios, across a wide range of mainstream and specialized asset classes, including digital infrastructure, logistics, healthcare, senior living, multifamily, office, and mixed‑use assets.

Our size, capability and experience in all of these aspects make us a go-to law firm for portfolio transactions, platform investments, and large‑scale capital deployment.

We structure, negotiate and document joint ventures that enable investors, sponsors and developers to efficiently acquire, scale and exit real estate portfolios. Our clients include public and private pension funds and pension fund advisors, sovereign wealth funds, other institutional investors, private equity funds, public and private REITs, and real estate developers.

“DLA are involved in the market. They're quick, reactive, experienced and know what they're doing. They are fantastic.”

Chambers, 2026

Our work includes advising on portfolio joint ventures, platform joint ventures providing for the acquisition of assets over time, and joint ventures in which one or more parties contributed properties. We also have experience with joint ventures formed to act as sponsors in private equity funds and real estate funds.

We bring a sophisticated understanding of the increasingly complex aspects of real estate transactions. This includes the related use of real estate investment trusts (REITs), blocker entities and inter-company debt, as well as advising on ERISA in the US. We’ve also responded to the growing appetite for indirect investment into real estate via investment vehicles, whether listed or non‐listed real estate companies, real estate investment funds or REITs.

Our team is also fully integrated with colleagues and practices worldwide, bringing together real estate, financing, regulatory, tax and transactional advice to ensure a full-service approach.

Experience

AEW Capital Management with respect to hundreds of programmatic joint venture transactions deploying multiple billions of dollars with respect to investments in senior housing, student housing, self-storage, medical office, life sciences, data centers, residential build-to rent, social infrastructure and other niche real estate related investments located throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe.
A global alternative asset manager in connection with its investment in a series of hyper-scale data center developments projects in Germany, France and Northern Virginia with an estimated development cost of US$7 billion.
A global alternative asset manager in the GBP3bn acquisition of Bourne Leisure Group, which operates through the Haven, Butlin’s and Warner Leisure Hotels brands across 56 sites in the UK.
Allianz Real Estate on various investments including: (i) its co-investment into a fund (alongside co-investors Gaw Capital Partners, Goldman Sachs and Great Wall), which has acquired 16 properties in Hong Kong; and (ii) its acquisition of 100% stake (acquired through two stages with 50% stake each) in a portfolio of five modern logistics assets in China which are owned by a Gaw Capital managed fund. The portfolio includes five projects in the areas of Shanghai, Jiaxing, Foshan, Wuhan and Shenyang.
Artemis Real Estate Partners in its acquisition of a 25-property national industrial portfolio from EQT Real Estate, comprising approximately 8.7 million square feet and financed with a US$515 million loan.
AXA Investment Managers on the acquisition, as part of a core strategy on behalf of a client, of the entire issued share capital of NorthStar Realty Europe Corp. (NYSE: NRE), a NYSE listed REIT, which owns a significant portfolio of 12 office properties and two hotel assets with a combined value of EUR1.1 billion located in key European cities in Germany, the UK and France.
CPP Investments on its US$5.2 billion acquisition of LXP Industrial Trust with Brookfield Asset Management, expanding its US logistics platform.
Harrison Street Asset Management in the sale of a student housing portfolio comprising 12 purpose-built communities across 10 states located near leading universities.
Oval Real Estate in the acquisition of the entire property asset base of the Janus Henderson PAIF – 38 properties in the UK with circa 300 tenants, valued in excess of GBP900m. We set up the JV between Oval and its investors and established a number of special purpose vehicles into which the properties were acquired, dealing with all of the corporate, tax and financing requirements of the transaction.
Ping An Insurance on the 30% share acquisition from and joint venture with Sun Hung Kai Properties in developing the commercial/retail complex at the West Kowloon Station in Hong Kong with acquisition price of around HKD15 billion.
Public Storage in connection with its US$10.5 billion acquisition of National Storage Affiliates, involving more than 1,000 properties across 37 states and Puerto Rico, including the real estate financing aspects of the transaction.
Soloviev Realty Group in the US$825 million disposition of a 3-property NYC multi-family portfolio on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and in phase 2 of a 3-phase sale of a US$1.6 billion 5-building NYC multi-family portfolio.