Ground leases are a specialist document negotiated almost entirely by non-specialists. The asymmetry is not about intelligence or counsel quality. It is that one side has seen the clause before and knows what it does in year thirty.
An owner holding an offer. Somebody has offered to buy the land under a building. Is the rent percentage market, is the cap defensible, what does the escalator compound to, and what has been quietly taken in the transfer and consent provisions.
An institution being asked to lease its land. Churches, private schools, hospitals, fraternal organizations and foundations are approached regularly by developers. They are usually advised well on the entitlement and poorly on the ninety-nine year economics.
A public body running a process. Agencies, authorities and districts that can lease land but cannot sell it, evaluating responses or writing the requirements before issuing them. Writing the rent mechanism into the solicitation is worth more than negotiating it afterwards.
A leasehold owner with a legacy lease. A read of an existing lease against the published agency leasehold standard, identifying exactly which provisions fail and what an amendment would have to accomplish.
A lender or borrower mid-transaction. A second opinion on whether a ground lease will survive the leasehold mortgagee review, before the process spends three months discovering it will not.
Most engagements are short and defined: a document review against a published standard, a rent and coverage model, or a memorandum on a specific structural question. The deliverable is a file you can hand to counsel and a board, not a retainer.
Where a longer engagement makes sense, it is usually a public or institutional process with a real calendar: writing the ground lease requirements into a solicitation, evaluating responses on a consistent basis, and sitting with the committee while it decides.
We are principally a buyer of land. That is a real conflict and we handle it by declaring it at the outset. On an advisory engagement we are advisors: we will not bid on the land we have been engaged to advise on, and we will say so in the engagement letter.
If a situation is better served by us as a principal than as an advisor, we will say that too, and you are free to take the analysis and run a competitive process with it. A second opinion that cannot tell you to go elsewhere is not a second opinion.
Advisory work is commercial real estate consulting. It is not legal, tax or investment advice, and it does not replace counsel, your CPA or a qualified intermediary.
The draft or existing ground lease. The rent and term economics, whether proposed or in place. And the context: stabilized net operating income and total project cost or purchase price. That is enough to give a preliminary read in days rather than weeks.
No. On an advisory engagement we are the advisor and will not bid on that land. The engagement letter says so.
A defined document review or structural memorandum, scoped and priced in advance. Longer engagements are usually institutional or public processes with a calendar.
Yes. Reading an existing or proposed lease against the published agency leasehold-mortgagee standard is the most common request.
Yes, and the deliverable is written to be handed to counsel. We underwrite the economics and the financeability; counsel drafts and advises on the law.
Yes. Requirements written into the solicitation are far cheaper to get right than terms negotiated after selection.
No. It is commercial real estate consulting and does not replace counsel, a CPA or a qualified intermediary.
A draft or existing ground lease, the proposed rent and term, and stabilized NOI with total cost. We will come back with a scope and a price before doing any work.
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