Articles Posted in Real Estate

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An NNN Lease, commonly referred to as Triple Net, is a commonly used commercial lease structure that requires the tenant to pay, in addition to its monthly rent, all costs associated with the operation of the building. Here is an overview of Triple Net, or an NNN Lease, and key concepts to be familiar with.

Real estate sale

What Is Triple Net?

Any number of costs can fall under a net lease, but Triple Net generally refers to the payment of property taxes, maintenance costs and insurance premiums, in addition to the base monthly rent. A Triple Net lease differs from a gross lease in that a gross lease is for a flat monthly amount, inclusive of all operational costs. Continue reading ›

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Purchasing real estate for investment purposes can be an excellent decision for individuals and businesses alike. Real estate tends to appreciate over the long-term, and both residential and commercial investment properties can generate significant rental income while building equity. Unfortunately in spite of the benefits, investment properties can also expose investors to significant legal liability as well.

Whether your property is an apartment building or a retail lot, issues that commonly arise within a building all have the potential to cause serious injury or financial loss. Fortunately, forming an LLC can help limit real estate investors’ personal liability and protect them from potential financial disaster.

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LLCs Protect Investors from Personal Liability

An LLC, or limited liability company, is a type of business formation that combines the liability protections of a corporation with the flexibility afforded by a partnership. They are particularly attractive to smaller companies and individual investors. LLCs can be owned by individuals or other businesses. Continue reading ›

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5 Items to Include in a Real Estate Purchase Contract

When you make an offer on real estate you want to buy, there can be a lot of paperwork involved. Many additions to real estate purchase contracts are obvious, such as the address of the property, purchase price and owners. Here is a list of 5 things to consider and include when drafting a real estate purchase agreement.

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1. Legal Description of Property

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lease.jpgWhether you’re starting a business or looking to expand, chances are you’ll encounter some kind of lease. The most common are the gross lease and the net lease. In this blog post we’ll take a look at the differences between the two and the benefits of each.

Gross Lease

In this scenario, the tenant pays a fixed amount each month. The landlord is responsible for the costs associated with property taxes, insurance and maintenance. A gross lease offers some flexibility because these properties are generally deemed as either Class B or Class C. They’re less desirable so the landlord may be willing to negotiate over things like who pays the utility bill.

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At a recent conference with San Jose and Silicon Valley real estate owners and lenders, Attorneys Jack Easterbrook and Tamara Pow presented their “Top 10 List” of issues that commonly arise in commercial real estate loan transactions. Having been involved in countless real estate and commercial loan transactions, Tamara and Jack developed the list to share with the participants key points to be attentive to when entering into a real estate transaction. The Top 10 List assumed that the basic business terms of the transaction had been decided, so the focus was on items that can arise in the documentation phase and create issues or obstacles in getting a deal to closing.

A previous blog presented three items from this Top 10 List, including: (1) inconsistency between a borrower’s state of registration and a lender’s requirement; (2) the special purpose entity and the independent direct/manager requirements of the lender; and (3) the personal guaranty. Here are three more items to keep in mind when negotiating a commercial real estate loan:

No. 4: Treatment of Other Creditors, Including Any Mezzanine Lender.

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As a business and real estate attorney in California, I often assist clients in real estate transactions using Internal Revenue Code Section 1031 to defer the tax on the sale of their real estate by transferring the tax attributes of that property into a new, like-kind, property. IRC Section 1031 is a federal statute, but we can also take advantage of the tax deferral on the exchange of like-kind property for California income taxes.

However, historically, when the exchange was made into property in another state, it was difficult for California to track these exchanges and make sure the state eventually got its share of deferred taxes. For example, if a real estate investor were to sell a shopping center in Sunnyvale, California and buy a shopping center in Incline Village, Nevada, and the real estate investor satisfied all of the IRC 1031 requirements, both federal and California taxes could be deferred until the later taxable sale of the Nevada property (or any other property into which it had been exchanged). The problem was that part of those deferred taxes were California income taxes, and California had no system in place to make sure the FTB was aware of the eventual tax recognition event. A new rule now provides the Franchise Tax Board with the information it needs to keep track of these transactions and the deferred taxes so that it can collect them when the time is right.

Starting January 1, 2014, if you exchange California property for out-of-state property you will be required to file an information return with the FTB for the year of the exchange and every subsequent year that the gain is deferred. Regardless of your state of residency at the time of the exchange, if you are a California resident when the out-of-state property is later sold, all of the gain is taxable in California. But don’t think that moving to Nevada can get you out of theses deferred taxes. If you were a California resident at the time of the exchange but you are a nonresident when it is sold, the previously untaxed California gain is still taxable to California. Also, if you exchange out-of-state property for California property you must reduce the California basis on the property by the amount deferred, even if you were a nonresident at the time of the exchange. [Source: Spidell’s California Taxletter, Vol. 35.7, July 1, 2013]. The new filing requirements will help the FTB track these exchanges.

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The personal guarantee has long been used to bolster the quality of a commercial loan, real estate loan or business loan. Often the personal guarantee is a full guarantee, extending to all obligations of the borrower and giving a lender potential recourse to all property of the guarantor in an enforcement action. Sometimes, however, the lender and guarantor agree that the guaranty will be more limited. A recent case out of the Bay Area, Series AGI West Linn of Appian Group Investors DE LLC v. Eves, 217 Cal. App.4th 156 (2013), dealt with such a limited guarantee , which carved-out the guarantor’s home and exempted it from the lender’s reach under the guarantee. The personal guarantee was very broad, but for the specific exclusion for the house. After the guarantee was signed, but before the loan soured and the lender demanded payment, the guarantor sold the exempted house for cash and put the proceeds of the sale in segregated accounts. Once defaults occurred under the loan, the question at issue was whether the carve-out under the guarantee exempted only the asset named, a house in Como, Italy (but for our purposes it could have been a home in San Jose or Palo Alto as well!) or extended to the proceeds from the cash sale of the house.

In the AGI West Linn case, the lender sued the guarantor and also asked the court to enter a right to attach order and writ of attachment to lock up the cash from the sale of the house. The guarantor opposed this, arguing that the money was simply proceeds of the excluded residence and, as the house itself was excluded from lender’s recourse, the direct proceeds of the sale of the house should be excluded as well. The lender countered that the guarantee did not say anything about “proceeds” being excluded, only the house.

The court held for the lender, taking a strict reading of the guarantee.

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Last November, I was working closely with one of our clients and their real estate lender to purchase a large property in the San Francisco Bay Area. I formed two California limited liability companies for the transaction. One LLC was the investment entity that was going to own the property, and the other was the management entity that was going to hold the sponsor interests in the deal. Both entities had to be properly and fully formed so that we could obtain good standing certificates from the Secretary of State and be in position to issue legal opinions for the lender. During the due diligence period, our client discovered something about the property that was not what had been represented to them by the seller of the property. As a result of this information, the purchase fell through.

Fortunately, despite all of the other costs expended on pursuing this property, the client had not yet paid the $800 franchise taxes for each of the two LLCs we formed. In California, if an LLC meets certain requirements it may cancel its Articles of Organization within 12 months of the filing by filing a Short Form Certificate of Cancellation with the Secretary of State, and avoid paying the first year’s franchise taxes. These requirements include:

– The California LLC has no debts or other liabilities (other than tax liability);
– The assets, if any, have been distributed to the persons entitled to them;
– The final tax return has been or will be filed with the Franchise Tax Board;
– The California LLC has not conducted any business since filing the Articles of Organization;
– A majority of managers or members, of if there are no managers or members, then the person who signed the Articles of Organization, voted to dissolve the LLC and

– If the LLC has received any payments from investors for LLC interests, those payments have been returned to the investors.

Source: Spidell’s California Taxletter, Vol 34.11, Nov. 1, 2012.

Because our client met all of these requirements, we were able to cancel the LLCs without paying the $1600 ($800 x 2) in California franchise taxes. If, on the other hand, the client had already paid the taxes, we would not have been entitled to a refund. With this in mind, sometimes when forming an LLC it may be better to wait until the last minute before the franchise taxes are due before paying them to make sure the business is going forward, as long as you either pay them before late fees would be imposed, or you are willing to incur late fees in the event your LLC does not qualify for the short form cancellation.

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An investor bought an apartment building in San Jose and the broker wanted to send flowers for the occasion. A large bouquet was delivered to the buyer’s office with a note that read, “Rest in Peace.”

The buyer was irritated and called the florist to complain. After he had told the florist of the obvious mistake and that he was not pleased, the florist said: “Sir, I’m really sorry for the mistake, but what I’m more concerned about is . . . there is a funeral taking place today, and they have flowers with a note saying, “Congratulations on Your New Apartment!”This amusing joke is a good way of reminding us that both real estate and business deals continue to be closed in the Bay Area. As a banking, real estate and business lawyer representing parties to these transactions, I am very aware, and I expect most readers are as well, that financing continues to be a critical part of making a successful deal. During the robust period prior to 2008, one way parties garnered additional leverage in structuring real estate transactions was to utilize so-called mezzanine financing, in which the collateral securing a junior layer of debt consisted of the ownership interests in the borrower rather than the real estate. When the borrower was a limited liability company, this junior loan collateral could be secured through a pledge of the membership interests the owners held in the borrowing LLC.

The concept of using mezzanine debt to enhance leverage has not gone away. However, recent cases looking at transactions structured several years ago have curtailed the latitude of mezzanine lenders (“Mezz Lender”) and improved the position of the senior secured lender (“Mortgage Lender”) in the event problems arise after loan closings. If you are a Mortgage Lender holding real estate collateral, this may make it more attractive for you to enter into a transaction involving mezzanine financing. If you are a Mezz Lender or a borrower seeking to obtain and use mezzanine financing, obstacles now exist that were not there – or at least not believed to exist – before the markets collapsed in 2008.

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As 2012 is coming to an end, corporations and individuals alike are already thinking about taxes that they will need to pay at year-end. Every meeting I have with business owners lately somehow comes around to talking about taxes and how much I expect taxes to increase next year. The passage of Assembly Bill 1492 added yet another tax to the mix – the wood and lumber tax. This tax may affect homeowners, contractors and real estate developers.

We have all heard that ordinary federal income tax rates, currently maxing out at 35%, are scheduled to increase to 39.6%. Dividends could lose their special tax treatment and be taxed at this ordinary income tax rate as well. Federal long term capital gains rates will go from 15% back up to 20%. Payroll taxes may go back up from 4.2% to 6.2%. The AMT exemption amount may go back to 2010 levels. And high income earners will have an additional 3.8% Medicare tax. But on top of all that, starting January 1, 2013, those of us in California will also have to pay an additional 1% tax on the sales price of engineered wood and lumber products. (Assembly Bill 1492 (Ch. 12-289)).

Normally I would write this off as minor, but this year my husband and I are actually right in the middle of planning a huge fencing and deck project for our new house. (Did you know there was still residential land in the Silicon Valley that has not been fenced?) So, it was quite annoying to read about how this tax is going to be instituted on lumber, decking, railings and fencing as well as particle board, plywood and other wood building products, and even non-wood but wood-like products such as plastic lumber and decking. Even more so because it is already the middle of October and I’m pretty sure our project won’t be completed until early 2013. So, if I buy all the wood before the end of the year, I save 1%… but probably end up with more than I need and the inability to return it. But, if I wait until January to buy it just in time to install it, I am going to hate paying that extra 1%.

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