The firm brings expertise of unmatched breadth and depth in real estate law and finance to its representation of lenders and borrowers in a wide range of sophisticated construction and permanent real estate-secured financings of properties nationwide.
The firm’s finance lawyers have long represented the nation's largest and most active financial institutions, including:
- banks
- investment banks
- life insurance companies
- credit unions
- bridge lenders
- private lenders
- conduit lenders
We have extensive experience representing lead lenders and loan participants in participated construction and permanent real estate loans and commercial loans.
Warehouse Finance
We represent warehouse lenders in the documentation, closing due diligence and enforcement of warehouse-lending transactions. We have pursued claims in California and several other states involving defaults under warehouse credit facilities. We have pursued warehouse borrowers, as well as transferees of collateral, and have been successful in recovering damage claims as well as foreclosing on personal property collateral. These include pursuit of claims for breach of master revolving credit and variable terms and letters, as well as claims for fraud related to credit facilities. We have particular expertise in foreclosure of personal property collateral.
Loan Servicing
We support national and regional lenders and loan servicers in the servicing of commercial and mortgage loans. Our transactional, litigation and bankruptcy lawyers focus on the management of special assets in workout, receivership, foreclosure, bankruptcy, REO management and disposition, and loan purchase and sale. We bring our skills in conduit finance and loan servicing to our representation of servicers of securitized loans, including in matters under pooling and servicing agreements, the REMIC provisions of the Internal Revenue Code, and rating agencies.
Loan Purchase and Sale
We regularly work with buyers and sellers of commercial and residential loans, including buyers and sellers of portfolios of distressed loans. We recently represented a regional bank in the $235 million sale of a portfolio of under-performing and non-performing loans.
Distressed Debt and Exercise of Remedies
Allen Matkins lawyers regularly assist financial institutions in the acquisition, disposition, servicing and resolution of distressed debt. Our lawyers handle routine loan modifications on defaulted loans as well as complex loan workouts and restructuring, judicial and non-judicial foreclosure, deed-in-lieu of foreclosure, receivership, enforcement of guaranties, and REO management and disposition. We advise on California’s one action and anti-deficiency laws and their potential impact on lender exercise of remedies against principal debtors and guarantors. We provide strategic and tactical assistance regarding the exit strategy for an asset. We have extensive experience coordinating local counsel across the country to prosecute and defend lawsuits involving all types of loans, and our teams address issues arising in the areas of banking, regulations, construction/mechanics liens, eminent domain and condemnation, title, foreclosures, probate and consumer banking.
EXPERIENCE
- Regional Bank. Represented a regional bank in the extension and modification of a matured acquisition loan to the tenant under two ground leases with the City of Los Angeles at a Los Angeles area civil aviation airport. The bank also made a new loan to the borrower for the construction of a build-to-suit passenger facility for a private fractional jet ownership service on the ground lease collateral. The construction loan is secured by the lien on the two airport ground leases, and also secured by a pledge by a borrower affiliate of a ground lease property located in Los Angeles. The transaction included substantial negotiations with the City agency that is the landlord under the collateral ground leases to obtain approval of the loan modification and additional construction loan, and enhancement of leasehold mortgagee protections in favor of the bank.
- Life Insurance Company. Represented a life insurance company in two consecutive mortgage loans secured by a Napa Valley resort. The borrower on the first loan obtained a cash-out loan upon acquiring the hotel for cash after the prior owner transferred the property to its lender by deed in lieu. After completing a renovation required by the franchisor, the borrower sold the hotel to the hospitality affiliate of a REIT with a new acquisition loan from our insurance client.
- Credit Union. Represented a credit union throughout a borrower bankruptcy in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Central District of California, ultimately succeeding on a motion for relief from stay. Relief from stay allowed the client to successfully complete foreclosure proceedings on its loan secured by three office buildings in Houston, Texas. The bankruptcy case was pending for over a year, and involved substantial negotiations of a consensual agreement under which the properties would be sold in the bankruptcy case. The conditions and timelines for sale were never consummated and, therefore, the client proceeded with a relief from stay motion. The relief from stay motion process involved a preliminary hearing on the motion, depositions of appraisers in Houston, Texas, an evidentiary hearing with live witness testimony from the appraisers, and the filing of a written post-evidentiary hearing closing argument. The Bankruptcy Court ruled in favor of our client and granted relief from stay.
- Regional Bank. Represented a regional bank in a successful effort to obtain an ex parte order for appointment of a receiver on seven loans to a local housing agency in Santa Barbara County secured by low-income rental housing projects. The client pursued the receivership when the filing of a non-judicial foreclosure action after monetary default failed to prompt action from the housing agency, and evidence mounted that, in the face of state budget cutbacks affecting the agency and reports of chronic mismanagement, the collateral properties were deteriorating and the housing agency was floundering and at risk of failure.
- Regional Bank. Represented a regional bank in the sale of 61 adversely classified loans totaling $323.6 million to an institutional buyer for $200.6 million in cash. The loans included over $100 million of nonaccrual loans. Among the loans sold were $142 million backed by commercial real estate including owner‐occupied, retail, hotel and multifamily properties. The portfolio also included another $100 million in commercial real estate under construction in similar asset classes.
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