The Dirt Lawyer's Blog Archive

I attended Bisnow's Second Annual Real Estate Summit at the InterContinental Hotel this morning. It was a packed house, with a lot of familiar faces and some great speakers, including Steve Fifield, Mike Reschke, Gerry Nudo and the keynote speaker, Neil Bluhm. (Hearing Bluhm speak is a big deal to many of the real estate cognoscenti, because he does not appear as frequently on the scene as a Sam Zell or a Donald Trump, even though he is also a billionaire and every bit as savvy.) What did I learn that I can pass on to you, along with my thoughts? (I am intentionally not attributing comments to any speaker here.)  Several panelists don't see any turnaround here in commercial real estate until at least 2013.  Lenders are dying to replaced paid off capital with new loans. I'm not seeing as much of that.  But I am seeing life that didn't exist before either.  I guess lenders and borrowers have different perspectives too. If a bank is asking for more money or capital, it is

So, now I read the Department of Labor is investigating several major home builders . Why? A copy of one letter, dated Aug. 1 and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, said the department was opening a probe under the Fair Labor Standards Act, which governs matters such as overtime pay and limits on using teen workers. The letter instructed the home builder to immediately turn over the names, addresses, Social Security numbers, pay rates and hours worked for all employees over the past two years. It asked the names of all contractors hired in the past year. The letter didn't allege any specific violations of law. I guess we'll see how this plays out.  I try hard not to get into the political side of these things, so I will not do so here.  Whether I agree or disagree with this is immaterial, because I can honestly see both sides of the issue.  But I WILL say that this is not going to get any new homes built, though.  And that's not good.

Let me relate to you a recent experience I just had. My wife and I just refinanced our home with a friendly local lender. We have a nice income, a very reasonable LTV and basically perfect credit. And being a doctor and a real estate lawyer, we know paperwork inside out. I, in particular, should. And yet it took three months to close a simple refi. Why? Overregulation. I understand that things were loosey-goosey a few years back. I said so. On some commercial deals I felt like we were in the Wild West. But now we have gone to the other extreme, where so many boxes had to be checked (at least half of which were not required even three years ago) that I got irate and almost killed the deal. (I will not even get into an absolutely idiotic title underwriting decision made by a certain large title company, but may do so in the future.) And if I got angry and frustrated -- knowing more than 99% of the public about this process -- imagine the average person, with less than impeccable credit,

Keeping his laser-like focus on jobs, I'm glad that President Obama is giving a major speech on jobs Thursday before a joint session of Congress. His latest proposal being leaked - infrastructure construction jobs through federal grants and payroll tax cut extensions - is even half right. But government can only do so much. Unless and until the private sector is moving again this economy is going nowhere. So here is my suggestion: take half the money you were going to spend on government work and pledge it (and maybe not even spend it!) to the private sector. How? It's simple. While there is some work going on, we need more real estate activity for small and mid-sized developers that are still in business. But many of them can't start new projects because no one will loan them the money. So take half that money, and use it to guarantee, say, 90% of the amount of construction and mini-perm loans for new developments by small and mid sized buisnesses. Lenders could then le