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Home > Our Services > Practices > Real Estate

Practices

Real Estate

At Morgan Lewis, our real estate practice offers more than just legal knowledge—we strategically partner with our clients. Our experience covers the entire spectrum of real estate transactions, enabling us to serve clients in a variety of industries. Our clients range from real estate investment trusts (REITs), private real estate companies, family offices, Fortune 500 companies, private equity and pension funds, institutional lenders, developers, advisers, managers, and colleges and universities. Our keen grasp of the industry empowers us to provide agile, efficient, and responsive counsel to meet the needs of our clients—wherever and whenever those needs arise.

Often in collaboration with attorneys across corporate, finance, investment management, environmental, and litigation, we support our clients with a robust team across the United States, Europe, and Asia, providing global expertise with local insights. Grounded in practicality and fueled by informed market insights, our real estate team provides full-spectrum support across the lifecycle of a deal. By leveraging Morgan Lewis's global industry acumen, we ensure that our clients receive strategic guidance every step of the way.

We represent clients in acquiring, selling, and financing a range of real estate assets and property portfolios. Our team assists buyers and sellers throughout the entire transaction process, from initial due diligence, contract negotiation and financing during an acquisition to the sale of the asset. We manage complex aspects such as title reviews, zoning issues, environmental concerns, and financing and corporate structures. We facilitate seamless acquisitions and sales in multiple jurisdictions, offering tailored advice that aligns with the client’s strategic objectives and market dynamics. In turn, we help clients maximize returns while minimizing legal hurdles in their real estate investments.

We represent landlords and tenants in connection with their leases and other day-to-day operational issues that arise at leased commercial property. We represent clients not only with their office leasing needs, but also in the development and leasing of headquarters buildings, industrial properties, life sciences facilities, and warehouses. We assist from letter of intent throughout lease negotiations, including addressing related documents such as lease guaranties, memoranda of leases, and lease title policy review. Further, we work extensively with clients in addressing tenant improvements and construction matters, including review of work letters and construction timeline matters.

We have extensive knowledge in the data center industry, working with clients in the development and/or leasing of data centers. We work closely with our construction, energy, and technology teams to help clients navigate the issues that arise during these complex transactions in this exploding industry.

Our lawyers work with national, regional, and local developers as well as a broad collection of institutional owners. We provide clients with transactional, due diligence, and advisory services. Our development work includes counseling on land acquisition, construction contracts, development agreements, due diligence, permitting, environmental review, and tax strategies. We are well versed in the technicalities and minutiae of both small and large development projects.

We advise on a wide range of joint venture transactions, from traditional sponsor/equity partner relationships on single assets, to programmatic and platform joint ventures, to preferred equity investments and fund formation. In this regard, we represent real estate sponsors, funds, public and private REITs, and other real estate investors who rely on us to capture the most critical components of partnership agreements. We advise on all issues associated with these types of agreements, including tax and regulatory issues associated with forming and operating such entities.

Institutional lenders and borrowers—as well as developers, private equity funds, and publicly traded REITs—rely on us to negotiate, document, and close construction, mezzanine, and permanent real estate loans and related transactions to help meet their business goals. We work closely with clients to address market conditions and assist with loans from national banking institutions, private equity, joint venture partners, and regional banks to meet the client’s finance needs for the project.

We represent a broad range of clients, including banks, insurance companies, real estate companies, and private equity in connection with the acquisition or disposition of distressed assets. Our real estate lawyers work closely with the bankruptcy and restructuring teams on workouts, foreclosures, and other types of restructurings.

Our real estate lawyers guide clients through the myriad transactional issues that arise in the management of real estate. We collaborate closely with clients to memorialize their property management and asset management agreements.