We also deal with site finding and acquisitions of brownfield and greenfield sites with potential for commercial or residential redevelopment, including submitting planning applications, and we can recommend one of our panel of architects. 

We seek instructions to let on lease, shops, offices, and vacant or occupied business premises, and businesses, and have a high demand for existing A3 restaurants or take away businesses or premises suitable for such use.   Similarly, we seek freeholds for sale of this category of premises. 

We are able to give Landlord and Tenant Act, 1954, advice on security of tenure of business premises, and can advise tenants or landlords on rent reviews.  This Act contains precise tight deadlines, and to miss them or any of them could prove extremely costly to a tenant or landlord. If you are a tenant of business premises and receive a notice from your landlord ask us for immediate advice as time is of the essence in these circumstances.

We are able to act for a client who wishes to remain anonymous in the acquisition of properties or land/sites for residential and commercial development. 

We are able to give planning appeals advice and submit planning appeals on clients’ behalf.   In conjunction with one of our panel of Town Planning Consultants we have won numerous planning appeals for commercial and residential development or re-development. For example, we acquired for clients the 11 acre Wells Nursery Site at Merstham, Surrey on the London Road South, and recommended one of our panel of Planning Consultants who advised both the client and their architect on obtaining planning consent for the commercial space re-development of the site for offices, warehousing, storage and distribution, which was subsequently granted. We can introduce re-development sites to developers, provided the developer retains us where we are not retained by the vendors. Usually we require to be instructed on sale or letting of the completed development. If required we can introduce a third party nominee to act as initial purchaser for a fee.

We have sold Commercial premises on the Holmethorpe Industrial Estate off of Frenches Road, Redhill, including the former Renault Showroom and workshops, and their Redhill / Reigate Showroom at Shaws Corner, we sold the freehold of.

We are also Investment property specialists, whether shop or offices or residential, and can advise on the purchase of business premises for owner occupation.  We can arrange mortgages in respect of the purchase of commercial premises for up to 20 years, either fixed or variable interest, or a combination of both. In certain cases business premises can be purchased for owner occupation in a SIP, and rent paid by the business can pay the mortgage. Ask for further information. We can advise you regarding the choice of a suitable firm of solicitors to undertake the conveyancing and other legal work required who can also provide you with expert legal advice.

We are also able to arrange mortgages/loans for (a) buy-to-let purchasers, and (b) for business expansion.  We are also able to arrange second mortgage advances. Commercial mortgage arranging is not covered by the Financial Services Act regulations.  We can introduce clients to a suitable bank with which to operate their business account/s.

Nicholas Defries, the founder of the practice, is still at the helm, and has been described as a highly astute estate agent by well-known Counsel. His eldest son, Graham Defries BA (Hons) Law, Solicitor, is the Secretary of the Company, and is a partner in the City of London office of a large U.S.A Corporate Law Firm with offices internationally, whilst his younger son, Stephen Defries, is a Director of the Company. He is a well known squash and tennis player having won many trophies. 

The late Edward Defries, father of Nicholas, was a master builder, who built speculatively for sale houses in Herts and Surrey, commencing in business in 1929. His family were established in business in London by 1803, and they built numerous Gas Works in England during first 100 years. In 1850/51 they exhibited at the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park in a Glass Palace subsequently removed to Sydenham, South London, to an area renamed Crystal Palace. The family firm received the Royal Appointment from Queen Victoria in 1874. They built numerous gas works abroad including St, Petersburgh, Russia for the lighting of the British Embassy, for the marriage of the Duke of Edinburgh to Princess Henrietta Maria, the only British firm to be entrusted with these works. Between 1836 and 1856 Nathan Defries invented and patented the first practicable Gas Meter followed by numerous upgrades and opened a factory in Euston and one in the Midlands to manufacture the same together with Gas fittings and pipe work and crystal chandeliers which were exhibited for sale at his Regent Street, London showrooms. He lit over 90% of the West End theatres in London (See the Gas Journal during Victoria's reign, and the Defries inventions exhibited at the Gas Museum). He built and installed a huge gas meter at the House of Lords.  The family glass works business built and erected the largest chandelier ever made at a Turkish palace in Istanbul, in which it still hangs.  They also made glass furniture  for this and other oriental palaces.  In 1892 a member of the Defries family formed an oil exploration company at the time of the infancy of the motor car/petrol engine.  This public company venture would have succeeded but for the 1893 depression and stock market crash.  The Samuels family who manufactured wooden boxes with shell decoration founded an oil exploration company at around the same period, and because of their basic business called it "Shell", and of course the rest is history!