Niresha Mudalige

Partner

Melbourne

Niresha specialises in commercial property matters across a variety of sectors.

Niresha specialises in commercial property matters with a focus on investments in real estate (including complex structured transactions), acquisitions and disposals of commercial properties, commercial contracts, property development projects and commercial and industrial leasing.

Niresha has significant experience in advising clients in all classes of real estate including alternative asset classes such as student accommodation, data centres, hotels, retirement living, manufactured homes and self-storage.

She is held in high esteem by her clients as a trusted advisor on their significant real estate projects. Clients describe her as "commercially focused" and someone who is considered to be a "valued member of our team, because she understands our business needs and delivers the outcomes we want".

Prior to joining Herbert Smith Freehills, Niresha was the senior in-house counsel for Viva Energy (previously Shell’s downstream business) responsible for all property and environmental legal matters.

Background

Juris Doctor from University of Melbourne. Bachelor of Business (Accounting) and a Bachelor of Computing from Monash University.

Experience & expertise

Selected matters

Advising data centre owners and hyperscale data centre operators on various strategic investments and acquisitions related to development of data centres across Australia and Asia, including NEXTDC on its acquisitions across Australia and Japan.
Advising Scape Australia in relation to its PBSA funds and assets and the acquisition, development and operation of assets in Australia. This includes acquisition of 3 assets from UTS in 2022, the $2.1 billion acquisition of the Urbanest student accommodation portfolio in 2020 and the $670 million acquisition of the Atira student accommodation portfolio in 2019.
Advising on various built-to-sell and built-to-rent transactions, including advising Rent to Live Co on its first acquisition to the BTR fund (in Marrickville, NSW) which involved complex structuring issues.
Advising on senior living assets, including Levande on its acquisitions in NSW and an institutional investor on its acquisition of a 25% interest in a $1.7 billion retirement living business.
Advising on various infrastructure and industrial transactions, including Port of Melbourne on a variety of development and complex leasing matters, Bingo on the acquisition of quarry sites across Australia and a self storage business on its acquisition of properties to build self-storage facilities.
Advising owners on sale and long term leaseback transactions (including on triple net lease arrangements) which included advising on Ampol’s $1.4 billion unlisted property trust.