What We Do

The variety and consequences of the decisions that borrowers and lenders face in structuring and completing real estate financings demand experienced and thoughtful counsel, and Ulmer & Berne’s real estate financing team is uniquely qualified to provide such counsel. Comprised of members of the firm’s real estate and corporate groups and supported by our commercial, environmental, regulatory and tax lawyers, our real estate financing team brings an intensely practical approach to designing and completing transactions that match the needs of the parties involved.

Contemporary real estate financing encompasses far more than the traditional construction and permanent loan model of project funding. The increasing difficulty of the development process, the availability of novel financing products and the value inherent in real estate make for a confusing but potentially rewarding marketplace of ideas. While we’re experienced and efficient at traditional real estate financings, we regularly participate – on behalf of commercial and institutional lenders, equity participants and other capital providers, as well as on behalf of capital users – in the development of nontraditional arrangements to finance the acquisition, construction, ownership and operation of all kinds of real property and real property interests.

We have helped our lending clients develop and implement transaction structures and techniques that are responsive to their needs and to those of their customers and markets. We take pride in identifying and designing transactions to meet the special needs of particular kinds of participants in the real estate industries (including public/private partnerships, real estate investment trusts, the developers of long-term multi-phased projects, nonprofit or public developers and corporations eager to monetize the value of their real property holdings).

We listen carefully to our clients, and work hard to recognize and anticipate their needs. We also pay attention to emerging issues in real estate development and finance and have been able to contribute to some of those emerging developments. Our lawyers have structured and closed a variety of innovative transactions, including equity and debt-secured mezzanine financings, pooled collateral transactions, sale/leasebacks and securitized financings, participating loans, off balance-sheet financings, taxable and nontaxable bond financings and a variety of agented and syndicated transactions. We understand that our work is not completed once a closing takes place.