Real Estate Finance - Borrowers

Our Focus

ArentFox Schiff attorneys represent buyers and sellers of a variety of real estate debt, including whole senior and mezzanine loans, participations, and syndicated and securitized interests.

Senior Debt

We have significant experience advising sponsors of real estate, joint venture partners, and other borrowers on structuring and managing senior loans as an important part of their financing.

Mezzanine Financing

We have negotiated mezzanine loan programs and transaction documents for clients with numerous mezzanine lenders including major institutional investors and well-known hotel chains. Our documents were developed with specific attention to the exercise of remedies in the mezzanine transaction and the relationship of those remedies to the rights and remedies of the senior lenders to provide for the greatest rights and flexibility for the mezzanine lender or borrower.

Tax-exempt Bond Financing

ArentFox Schiff assists tax-exempt institutions in using tax-exempt and conventional-test financing to augment and develop projects and acquire equipment, with a particular focus in the Washington, DC area, New York City, and New York State. In the District of Columbia, important clients have included the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, The George Washington University, the National Geographic Society, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. We also assist entities locally and nationally in financing public facilities, school facilities, headquarters facilities, and other projects.

We have the leading borrower’s counsel practice in the Washington, DC-area and have participated in approximately 80 percent of the conduit municipal bond issues of the District of Columbia since the inception of its bond program. Members of the firm serve as borrower’s counsel, bond counsel, special tax counsel, underwriters’ counsel, credit enhancer’s counsel, or trustee’s counsel on numerous such financings.

Our Work

• Affiliates of Goldman Sachs in connection with mezzanine loans related to acquisition financing from Barclays Capital for assets including office parks and office buildings; acquisition financings with multiple levels of mezzanine debt from Lehman Brothers for assets including a limited service hotel and offices buildings.
• Goldman Sachs in connection with the financing of a portfolio of 12 multifamily properties in the original principal amount of approximately $250 million.
• Colony NorthStar in the financing of 12 senior living facilities located in various states.
• Marriott International, Inc. on multimillion dollar construction financing and mezzanine loans, sales of the mezzanine loan, and refinancing of senior loans related to several of their largest and most prestigious resorts.
• KIPP DC in connection with several real estate and financing transactions. Most recently, ArentFox Schiff represented KIPP DC in the ground lease of the Webb School from the District of Columbia and a rated, 35 year fixed-rate bond financing transaction. Proceeds were used by KIPP DC to renovate and expand the Webb School and to refinance a substantial portion of KIPP DC’s existing debt.
• Provident in the $107 million residential expansion of Howard University’s Northwest DC campus that will accommodate more than 1,300 students. The financing was done off-balance sheet, a method that allows schools to allocate their borrowing capacity to facilities that do not generate a discrete revenue stream.
• Community Memorial Hospital, located in Ventura, California, in an approximate $280 million seismic replacement hospital project, to be insured by Cal Mortgage.
• The JBG Companies in connection with a construction loan secured by a mixed-use residential and retail project in Rockville, Maryland.