Birkett Long welcomes Jennifer Tully to Commercial Property Team

Birkett Long is delighted to announce that solicitor Jennifer Tully has joined its Commercial Property team as a Senior Associate.

Jennifer specialises in land acquisition and disposals for housebuilders, landowners, and land promoters, with a particular focus on strategic land work (such as conditional contracts, options, promotion agreements, collaboration agreements and complex overage arrangements).

Jennifer sets herself apart with her dedicated approach to work. She goes above and beyond to deliver exceptional results for her clients. She understands the importance of each transaction to her clients and strives to make a significant impact.

A visit to the European Parliament during her Modern Languages degree sparked Jennifer’s journey into commercial property. This ignited a passion for the legal sector, which she pursued through various work experience placements. Jennifer particularly enjoys the tangible nature of real estate work and the reward of seeing a development through from start to finish.

While training as a solicitor, Jennifer was involved in providing asset management advice to a pension fund on the management of a shopping centre. Jennifer also spent six months on secondment at Transport for London (TfL), working on property and planning matters.

When Jennifer was in her previous role, she was the lead associate for a national housebuilder through its ambitious project to secure land for a new zero-carbon community in South Cambridgeshire. The project is considered a significant moment in Jennifer’s career for two reasons. First, it featured a new and inventive agreement structure, a rarity in the sector. Second, the scale of the project was large, with the goal of establishing a new town consisting of 25,000 carbon-neutral residences with a variety of mixed uses, including a technology hub in the pattern of Silicon Valley.

Jennifer believes that the agreement structure has the potential to serve as a model for future large-scale strategic land business transactions.

Jennifer continues to work on significant land deals. One of these deals involved the purchase of a seventeen million pound site for a PLC housebuilder to provide a new settlement in Buckinghamshire, with capacity for more than 700 residential units and accompanying infrastructure. The deal also involved the negotiation of four distinct categories of overage.

In the development world, commercial relationships can last the lifetime of a development scheme, which may be many years. Therefore, Jennifer recognises the importance of maintaining a positive relationship with all those involved to achieve an outcome that successfully balances the interests of all parties.

On joining Birkett Long, Jennifer said, “The firm has a brilliant reputation for commercial property and genuinely cares about the communities it serves. I am particularly excited to join the firm as it grows its real estate development team. I look forward to what the future holds.”

Emma Wraight, Partner and Head of Commercial Real Estate and Residential departments, added, “Jennifer’s extensive development experience, particularly in acting for national housebuilders, will be a great asset to our clients and the growth of the Real Estate Development Team. We are very pleased to have her in the team and look forward to working with her.”

Commercial real estate is a sector that is constantly evolving, and Jennifer is always ready to meet its challenges head-on.

Whether it’s adapting to new technologies like AI or addressing societal issues through legislative changes such as biodiversity net gain, she’s always at the forefront. Her adaptability is a testament to her commitment to her work and clients, instilling confidence in her ability to handle any situation.