Kate Howson

Kate is an experienced commercial property lawyer with a background in both the Australian and UK markets.

Kate has spent over 13 years assisting landlords, tenants, developers, investors, financiers, business operators and government entities with a wide variety of complex real estate matters.

Kate is also passionate about the importance of diversity, inclusion and equity in the workplace and has held a number of leadership positions in workplace people networks.

Experience

Kate has advised both Australian and international clients within a wide range of sectors including industrial, retail, energy and natural resources, logistics, infrastructure, childcare, farming, technology and banking.

After spending four years in a magic circle law firm in London, Kate immigrated to Australia, working for a wide range of UK and European based clients including institutional landlords and commercial developers.

Kate's areas of expertise include:

• large real estate capital transactions
• real estate elements of corporate business sales and purchases
• land tenure elements of large-scale renewable energy projects
• major commercial, retail, industrial and residential leasing transactions
• commercial property development.

Kate has been a part of the Property Council of Australia's '500 Women in Property' program. Kate has spoken on the topic of diversity and inclusion at several D&I conferences and events, including at a Tokyo Pride conference in Tokyo, Japan in July 2025 and at the annual Pride in Diversity Pride in Practice Conference in Melbourne in November 2024.

Career highlights

Kate's career highlights include:

• acting for BE Power (a large Australian developer and operator of renewable energy power plants) in relation to the acquisition, related management and proposed disposal of a variety of land tenure for the development of a 400MW pumped hydro storage project in North Queensland with a project funding level of 1.6 billion
• acting for Busy Bees, a global childcare company with a prominent Australian childcare centre business (with over 140 centres in Australia) in relation to supporting its expansion strategy across Australia via acquisitions of various childcare businesses, development of new centres and maintenance of its portfolio of leases across Australia
• acting for a large Australian renewable energy project developer specialising in wind, battery storage and solar PV energy projects, on the real estate elements of the disposal of its interest in over 70 energy projects across Australia
• acting for WeWork (a leading co-working space provider) in relation to the drafting and negotiation of a number of its co-working office lease agreements (and ancillary agreements) in Qld, NSW, Victoria and WA.
• acting for Graincorp (a large Australian agribusiness) on multiple sales of grain storage assets in Queensland and the purchase of land to develop a grain transport rail siding and storage facility
• advising a New York based media, entertainment and production company on the proposed purchase of land in Queensland for the purposes of development of an innovative entertainment campus
• acting for ESP (a leading real estate asset manager in the Asia Pacific region), in relation to its large leasing portfolio of various high scale commercial office building assets throughout Australia
• acting for Suncorp in relation to the Real Estate elements of its financing of various development projects (including flat land and strata land) in Queensland.