Claire is a real estate senior paralegal specialising in social housing issues for registered social landlords (RSLs) and local authorities (LAs). With a focus on shared ownership properties, she has experience in dealing with staircasing transactions which include repossession staircasing, reverse staircasing and simultaneous resales. She also has a lot of experience in handling right to buy and right to acquire transactions, leasehold schemes for the elderly, site-set ups and property security work.

Claire also deals with lease extensions (both voluntary and statutory), freehold reversions, deeds of easement and buy-backs.

Previous work has included:

• instructed to act on behalf of a client following a large scale voluntary transfer from a local authority to a registered provider and handling approximately 450 – 500 right to buy and right to acquire instructions per year;
• instructions from a client for the preparation and issuing of s125 notices for right to buy/acquire applications followed by the conveyancing process for continuing applications;
• completion of leases/transfers for metered estates on behalf of a service provider;
• disposals of shared ownership properties following the Try Before You Buy scheme;
• dealing with a large portfolio of auction sales in relation to long leasehold residential apartments; and
• large acquisition programme for a local authority obtaining properties to be allocated for emergency accommodation.

Prior to joining Shoosmiths in 2008, Claire was employed by Cobbetts, following their merger with Lee Crowder, having also worked for Wragge & Co and Culpans (also known as Culpan Vizor or David Vizor).