About Sarah
Sarah Finch is a Partner in the Real Estate Disputes team.
Sarah specialises in real estate litigation. She has a broad practice which includes leasehold enfranchisement, rights of first refusal and disputes involving high value residential property.
Her role is to provide advice, run lease extension and collective enfranchisement claims and conduct larger pieces of litigation in the courts and tribunals. Her clients include ground rent investor landlords, overseas investors and high net worth individuals.
Sarah’s practice also covers the full range of commercial landlord and tenant and real property law. She acts in an advisory capacity and undertakes general management work. In particular, Sarah oversees the litigation work for an investor landlord with a large portfolio of office, retail and warehouse properties. Sarah has also historically overseen litigation work for clients with large shopping centre portfolios. She also conducts larger pieces of litigation in the county and high courts. In the landlord and tenant arena, this includes business lease renewals (opposed and unopposed), dilapidations, telecoms disputes and tenant breach (including forfeiture and injunctive relief).
Her experience in both the commercial and residential sectors means she is able to provide a full service to investor and developer clients.
Sarah’s real property work includes advice and litigation in relation to easements (including rights to light), restrictive covenants, TOLATA claims and trespass, both in terms of squatters and boundary disputes.
Sarah also advises and acts in relation to property related insolvency matters and contractual disputes; including claims for specific performance, rescission and claims in the administration of companies.
Sarah is recognised by Legal 500 as a Recommended Lawyer and ranked by Chambers and Partners.
Work Highlights
- Acting for a ground rent landlord in relation to an extremely contentious application for forfeit the long lease of a flat, where the landlord has succeeded both in the First-tier Tribunal and the Upper Tribunal re-hearing, in obtaining a declaration there was a breach of the lease. The leaseholder appealed on two points of law (including under the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002, the right to manage legislation) which was heard by the Court of Appeal and Sarah’s landlord client was successful on both issues. Sarah is currently dealing with multiple pieces of litigation on the same building, including a service charge reasonableness application spanning 12 years and valued at £5 million, a breach of trust claim against a former statutory manager worth £3.5 million and an appeal of a High Court Judgment in declaratory proceedings.
- Acted for the defendant right to manage company in relation to a mixed residential and commercial block. The commercial tenant claimed that the RTM company is obliged to carry out extensive works to stop water ingress to their property. Not only did this involve extensive expert evidence as to the causes of the water ingress but involved a then untested issue under the right to manage legislation as to when management functions relating to commercial premises pass to right to manage companies. The matter went to trial in 2020 which meant Sarah was involved with two of the decisions relating to the right to manage legislation (an area where there are few reported decisions).
- Settled a complex dilapidations claim worth circa £500,000 for a major client at mediation. This involved complex issues relating to the appropriate standard of repair where the tenant was a Housing Association and the lease began in the 1990s.
- Settled a high value breach of quiet enjoyment claim arising from a landlord’s works to a shopping centre. Given the client was a casino operator, the calculation of loss involved detailed expert evidence and novel issues over whether loss of profit was an appropriate measure of damages.