Welcome to the final edition of the Real Estate Round-Up for 2025.
As the year comes to a close, a clear pattern is emerging across Australia’s real estate sector: rapid technological change and shifting regulatory expectations are exposing structural, safety and compliance pressures that cut across the entire property lifecycle.
Recent critical incidents involving uncontrolled industrial safety gates have reinforced the devastating consequences that can occur when they fail due to poor design, installation and maintenance. Prosecutions by safety regulators have shone a light on the work health and safety duties of care owed by multiple duty holders including owners, occupiers, contractors, and strata managers, who have all been charged and penalised for industrial gate failures. The message is clear: if you have an industrial gate at your property, you have a proactive duty to ensure it is safe.
Can a party rely on its own breach to terminate an agreement? While it might seem like a simple question, the devil (as always) is in the detail. The Supreme Court of NSW has recently decided on this very issue in the context of a lease, resulting in the tenant being found to have improperly terminated and being ordered to pay millions.
This heightened accountability is mirrored in the regulatory environment, with private credit funds which lend to real estate facing additional scrutiny from ASIC as the regulator targets private credit fund compliance as an enforcement priority in 2026. This focus on regulatory enforcement comes as no surprise given ASIC has released a series of reports and papers detailing common compliance deficiencies for private credit funds which lend to real estate.
At the same time, AI-driven growth is intensifying demand for industrial land, data centres and energy-hungry infrastructure. AI is fundamentally changing industries in Australia and abroad with its use continuing to grow at both an individual and organisational level. But this begs the question – where are we getting the power to fuel this new tech? Currently, AI innovation is outpacing both infrastructural capacity and current regulatory frameworks. Without proper investment and reform across these two key sectors, the AI revolution may quickly turn into the AI energy crisis.
Together, these trends illustrate how real estate now sits at the intersection of safety, regulation and technological disruption. Owners, investors and operators who proactively strengthen governance, compliance and infrastructure planning will be best positioned to navigate a market where operational, regulatory and energy pressures are rapidly converging.
We hope you enjoy this edition. We wish you and your families a joyful and restful holiday season and look forward to bringing you further insights in 2026!
