Across the lifecycle
A development is a sequence of contracts, and a weakness at one stage tends to surface at the next. We act at each of them, from site acquisition and financing security through to the construction contract itself and the eventual sale or letting of the completed units.
Leases
Our team is experienced in drafting, reviewing, and enforcing various lease agreements, whether for residential, commercial, or industrial properties, including the requirements applying to private residential leases in Malta.
Where construction disputes actually start
Very few construction disputes are about the building. They are about payment terms that did not anticipate a delay, variations agreed on site and never documented, or a defects liability period whose scope nobody defined. All three are drafting questions, settled long before a dispute exists.
We draft and review construction contracts with that in mind, and we act when things have already gone wrong, advising on liability, on the evidence needed to establish it, and on whether the claim is better pursued in court, in arbitration, or through negotiation.
Acting across the transaction
- Site acquisition, including title and planning due diligence
- Financing and the security granted over the development
- Construction contracts, variations and payment schedules
- Residential, commercial and industrial leases
- Sale of completed units, and the promise-of-sale stage
- Defects, delay and enforcement of contractual remedies
Working with the professional team
A development runs on the work of architects, periti, engineers, quantity surveyors and financiers, and the legal work has to fit around theirs rather than the reverse. We are used to operating as one part of a professional team, taking instructions at the pace the project actually moves and flagging the legal consequence of a commercial decision before it is taken rather than afterwards.
That matters most at the points where the disciplines meet: when a planning condition changes what can be built and therefore what has been sold, or when a variation on site alters the payment position under the contract. Those are the moments where a project either absorbs a problem or starts generating a dispute.
Common questions
- Do you draft construction contracts?
- Yes, and we review them for clients on both sides. Payment terms, variations, delay and defects are where construction disputes concentrate, and they are all matters of drafting.
- Can you help with a dispute over building defects?
- Yes. We advise on liability, on the evidence needed to establish it, and on whether the claim is better pursued in court or through negotiation.
- Do you handle commercial leases?
- Yes, for residential, commercial and industrial property, acting for both landlords and tenants.