Case Study: Student Housing Development

The Real Estate Group has assisted a client with the development of a number of large-scale, privately owned student housing projects associated with major American universities.  Each one had a number of unique problems to solve.  Typical of these is a three-building, 749 bed housing project developed in Philadelphia.  We took the lead role in preparing and negotiating a long-term ground lease with the university that owns the land for the project, prepared and negotiated an agreement with the university providing for the master lease of a majority of the beds in the project to guarantee cash flow, resolved title problems (including the failure of the university to own a small but significant part of the property on which the largest building was partially located), negotiated the operating agreement with the client’s financial partner in the project, prepared and negotiated major provisions of the cost-plus, guaranteed-maximum-price construction contract for the project, and negotiated the documentation for, and handled the closings of, both the construction loan and the mezzanine loan for the project.