Latest News & Developments in Commercial Real Estate Law
Since 2008, we have used our real estate law blog as a way to keep readers informed about the latest developments and news within commercial real estate law. Some of the topics we regularly address include court decisions on disputed commercial real estate transactions, limited liability company law and high-end residential real estate transactions. In addition to informing readers, we make it a priority to provide an in-depth analysis of the topics we discuss.
Private lenders who step into the breach when funds are needed to acquire a site or keep a job moving until a construction or permanent loan is closed frequently look for ways to share in the upside of the project. Becoming a member of the borrower is fraught with difficulty – management time is required, definitions of profits are sometimes elusive and if the deal craters, there may be no profits to share. A recent lender in that position creatively asked for a fixed percentage of revenues of the borrower – no fight over profits needed. It was a condo project and the revenues should be easy ...
Update January 2010: The decision I discuss in my original post was overturned. See my update dated January 21, 2010. The proverbial floodgates of litigation in the co-op world appear to have opened. The first case may be Bleecker St Tenants Corp v. Bleecker Jones LLC where the co-op tried to use the Rule Against Perpetuities to defeat a long term commercial lease signed years ago which no doubt limited rent to 20% of income (NYLJ, 9/4/08, pg 27). The Perpetuities Rule has long bedeviled law students and is a famously esoteric mind-bender. At its most simplistic it prohibits options which ...