Real Estate Finance

The commercial real estate finance sector is constantly evolving. Investor, owner, and lender success is often driven by recognizing and adjusting to market changes. Seyfarth’s Real Estate Finance lawyers work closely with our clients to help them achieve their goals in this dynamic and competitive environment.

HOW WE HELP

Our practice operates as an integrated national team, drawing on the collective experience of our attorneys to help clients achieve their goals in a competitive, rapidly evolving market. We are trusted by many of the nation’s leading lenders, including two of the top five and four of the top 10 mortgage originators, and eight of the top 10 servicers.

We combine deep knowledge of lending markets, industry trends, and complex finance principles with practical commercial judgment to deliver practical, business‑focused counsel that helps drive transactions to completion. We advise clients across all phases of the market cycle, and we measure our success by client satisfaction, reflected in the quality of our work, responsiveness, cost‑effectiveness, and our use of industry‑leading matter management technology that provides real‑time transaction visibility and streamlines document production.

Our team focuses on both traditional and emerging areas of real estate finance, including infrastructure, data centers, health care, cannabis, cybersecurity, blockchain, and opportunity zone investments. We meet regularly to share best practices and track legal developments, such as CFIUS, HVCRE, C-PACE, trends in deed-in-lieu, and state‑specific regulatory changes, that affect our clients’ lending positions and risk profiles. Key insights from these discussions are distilled and shared through our What’s Now in REF email. We also actively engage with the broader real estate finance market through involvement in key industry organizations, speaking roles, and thought leadership.

With experienced attorneys from coast to coast, we collaborate seamlessly with colleagues across tax, construction, leasing, fund formation, securities, environmental, bankruptcy, litigation, labor & employment, and ERISA to deliver timely, comprehensive, and practical results aligned with our clients’ broader business objectives.

OUR SERVICES

Our attorneys handle a wide variety of transactions and have experience across the full spectrum of real estate finance, including:

• Permanent, bridge, and construction financings
• Capital market loans, including CMBS and CLO financings
• Portfolio loans, including multistate, property, lender, and borrower facilities
• Health care finance
• Mezzanine and A/B tiered structures
• Leasehold and leased fee mortgage financing
• Delaware Statutory Trusts (DSTs)
• Preferred equity structures
• Repurchase and loan-on-loan financings
• Loan acquisitions and sales
• Sale/leaseback arrangements
• Letter-of-credit-enhanced transactions
• Participations and other syndicated arrangements
• Loan administration and servicing, loan assumptions and modifications
• Default, workout, foreclosure, deed-in-lieu, and bankruptcy matters

THE SEYFARTH EXPERIENCE

Our Real Estate Finance team understands that an efficient, streamlined loan process helps clients achieve their goals regarding profitability and borrower satisfaction.

Tailored Solutions to Add Value to Lending Programs and Real Estate Portfolios. We have a track record of using technology, process improvement, and innovative staffing to create tailored solutions for our real estate finance clients that reduce deal cycle times, improve processes, and reduce costs. Our technology provides 24/7 access to matter tracking—including checklists, critical dates/deadlines, and a document library.

Real Estate Due Diligence Hub. Our team includes attorneys, paralegals, and support staff—known as the Hub—who handle the often extensive, cost-sensitive due diligence work common in commercial real estate transactions, including, depending on the transaction, title, survey, and lease reviews. The Hub allows us to deliver customized, efficient, high-quality work product, while allowing for cost predictability.

Upon request, we also help our lending clients through the process of revising form loan documents or, in some cases, creating loan forms for new or updated lending platforms.