Real Estate Development & Finance

Apartments, condominiums, shopping centers, mixed-use projects, office buildings, hotels, industrial properties and golf course communities: our real estate lawyers have extensive experience handling sophisticated transactions for both domestic and non-U.S. clients involving all kinds of real estate assets. We regularly help both individual and institutional clients with the negotiation and structuring of equity joint ventures, and with the formation of limited-liability companies and general and limited partnerships.

From project inception to completion, developers and owner/operators including Ultima Holdings, The Muntzing Sattele Company, and ABG Development trust Stites & Harbison to stay on top of legal details including planning, acquisition, financing, construction, leasing, contract negotiation, and negotiating easements and access rights for a variety of properties.

Examples include:

• Handling purchasing and refinancing matters for five shopping centers developed by one of its clients
• Working closely with another client in developing rural land into booming residential subdivisions
• We have also helped clients form equity joint ventures for developing vertical mixed-use projects in several states. The projects ranged in value from $25 million to $85 million each.
• In another instance, our firm handled the $150 million purchase of 40 apartment complexes throughout the country on behalf of a public company, while at the same time helping a residential developer put together six tracts involving more than 20 legal descriptions for a mixed-use development of mid-priced homes for working families.

The real estate attorneys in our firm's Lexington office have helped several clients realize innovative mixed-use development projects throughout central Kentucky. Many of these are communities developed around golf courses, which incorporate the conservation of scenic land.

Other real estate deals the firm has handled include:

• Retail and shopping centers
• Airports
• Low-income and multi-family housing developments
• Multi-use developments
• Office buildings
• Business and industrial parks
• Golf resort communities
• Residential developments, including single family homes
• Specialty properties such as hotels, mobile home parks and mini-storage warehouses

Lenders and borrowers count on Stites & Harbison to represent them in matters like mezzanine and mortgage financing, debt instrument conversion, joint ventures, and other arrangements. Our attorneys serve pension funds, institutional advisors, credit companies, insurance companies, and individuals.

Along with the traditional tasks of due diligence and document preparation, our real estate attorneys and paralegals "get the deal done" by taking a proactive approach to ensure that every detail is covered so the deal does not stall. We will never present a problem to a client without solutions in hand.