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Chair: Russell E. Morse213.626.2906Email

Firm Spotlight

Home Practices

Real Estate

Meyers Nave’s Real Estate Practice attorneys serve the transaction, regulatory compliance and litigation needs of real estate owners, lenders, investors, developers, landlords, tenants, and planners. We advise on the purchase, development, ownership, use, encumbering, and transfer of land and real property interests. Our services ensure compliance with applicable laws, including state housing regulations such as the State Housing Accountability Act, the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA), Density Bonus Law, SB 35, and Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) requirements. Our clients include business entities, public agencies, family offices, nonprofits and public-private partnerships. We serve clients from offices in six major economic regions in California.

We work on all types of real estate projects – commercial, industrial, residential, mixed-use, transit-oriented development, hospitality, retail, restaurant, entertainment and sports venues, healthcare, and education. Our attorneys guide clients through all aspects of real estate law for projects on all types of improved and unimproved land, including brownfield, greenfield, infill, redevelopment, and public use.

We bring a 360-degree perspective based on experience representing all stakeholders in real estate transactions and litigation. We can anticipate each party’s interests and concerns and we help clients achieve a wide range of financial objectives and business goals. Our transaction advice is strategic and practical, and our litigators leverage their experience representing clients as defendants and plaintiffs.

Transactions
Meyers Nave assists clients with a comprehensive range of real estate transactions. For example, we help structure, negotiate and close purchases, sales, sale-leasebacks, easements, licenses, and tax-deferred exchanges on all types of developed and undeveloped land, as well as conduct due diligence investigations and structure and negotiate financing and ground leasing agreements associated with these transactions. We help clients protect their interests, minimize liability, and meet their goals in a manner that facilitates the consummation of the agreement and furthers our clients’ business plan.

Our transactions experience includes acquisitions, dispositions and sale-leasebacks; Economic Development Benefits agreements (including disposition and development agreements and community benefit agreements); development, redevelopment and rehabilitation; due diligence investigations; property encumbrances including easements; financing documents, including state and federal funds and tax credits; ground leases; leasing, licenses, assignment and subletting; partnership agreements for ownership, development and operations; property management and operations; and relocation (residential and commercial).

Litigation
Meyers Nave litigation attorneys have significant experience resolving real estate disputes on behalf of property owners, lenders, investors, and developers. We have extensive experience in litigation in state and federal courts including contract claims, tort claims and non-compliance claims under the Uniform Commercial Code. Our dispute resolution experience also includes mediation, settlement conferences, and arbitration.

We litigate real estate and real estate-secured transactions involving bad faith negotiation of terms; breach of contract (sale, purchase, lease); commercial evictions; easements; environmental compliance; fraud and misrepresentation; housing, subdivision, and density bonus law disputes; land use and zoning disputes; partnership disputes; permitting process, administrative procedures and proceedings; insurance coverage; construction disputes; and ADA matters.

Representative Experience: Transactions

  • Provide a global fund management company with due diligence review and advice on real estate acquisitions, including land use entitlements and environmental conditions and compliance for potential property purchases and investments. Draft detailed memoranda of compliance with standards, issues of concerns, and strategies to reduce entitlement risks.
  • Advise a California non-profit public benefit corporation on conservation easements, conveyance of watershed lands, land transactions, and real property matters, including the purchase and donation of 140 acres to be used for habitat conservation and permanent open space.
  • On behalf of the property owner, negotiated the lease for the first U.S. retail space for Belgian fashion designer Dries Van Noten. Lease negotiations were successfully completed in May 2020 with an opening of the Los Angeles store in October, overcoming new issues and challenges encountered during the COVID-19 pandemic business environment.
  • Serve as a key legal advisor to high-net-worth individuals and family offices, including representation in connection with private lending, direct investment, leasing, licenses, entitlement, and divestment of real estate.
  • Assist an international developer with land acquisition and City approvals for a luxury hotel development in the Disneyland California area.
  • Advise non-profit housing developers, non-profit land trusts, and for-profit homebuilders in negotiating and drafting agreements for development, land acquisition, affordable housing requirements, ground leases, and financing documents for public agency assistance for rental and for-sale multi-family housing development projects throughout California.
  • Completed a comprehensive scope of real estate transactions for a nationwide retailer, regional grocery chain, and owners of commercial and residential property portfolios.
  • Counsel for the developer of master-planned communities and commercial sites including land use due diligence, acquisition and remediation.

Representative Experience: Litigation

  • Represented a national big-box retailer in resolving hundreds of lease disputes, including successful verdicts in numerous commercial unlawful detainer trials.
  • Represented an investor-owned utility in an action for specific performance of a real property purchase agreement concerning land jointly owned by multiple individuals and implicating issues of several liability.
  • Represent a city in a lease and purchase agreement dispute with a commercial developer based on complex bond financing transactions.
  • Represent a city, city council, former mayor and city manager in a lawsuit brought by the developer of a large-scale, smart-growth, mixed-use, urban infill development project asserting equal protection and due process violations and business torts related to denial of permits and treatment during the entitlement process.
  • Represented a nonprofit in a contract claim related to easement rights and encroachments regarding a neighboring construction project.
  • Secured summary judgment for an airport authority involving breach of ground leases.

Represented a city in a breach of land disposition agreement case, securing judgment of the pleadings on key damages claims.