• Gregory Thorpe
      400 South Hope Street
      Los Angeles, CA, 90071
      Phone: +1-213-430-6593
      Fax: +1-213-430-6407
PROFESSIONALS

  • Anschutz Entertainment Group
    Buchanan Street Partners
    Carson Estate Trust
    Centerline Urban Capital
    CityView
    Conexant Systems, Inc.
    Cook Inlet Region, Inc.
    Donahue Schriber Realty Group
    Fannie Mae
    Fremont Realty Capital
    ICI Development Company
    IHP Capital Partners
    KB Home
    • Kennecott Land Company
      Meer Capital Partners
      Mickel Trust
      Resmark Equity Partners
      SunCal Companies
      The Macerich Company
      Tishman Speyer

Real Estate

Dramatic changes in capital-formation methods, development structures, and regulatory requirements are reshaping the international real estate market. Investors are looking for legal and financial advisors whose diverse substantive and geographic experience can assist them in developing projects, negotiating investments and partnerships, establishing trusts, and sustaining long-term transactions.

Throughout its history, O’Melveny has helped real estate clients build and reshape cities in urban as well as remote environments with an emphasis on minimizing investor risk while maximizing results on complex projects. Through interdisciplinary collaboration, our real estate team works closely with our lawyers in the key areas of finance, tax, sales and acquisitions, environmental compliance, and dispute resolution to craft innovative, practical strategies for our clients.

From the sale of San Francisco’s famous Embarcadero Center buildings to structuring a US$400 million investment for a Chinese developer, our real estate practice spans the globe, and includes entrepreneurial investors and developers, as well as large institutional clients.

Key Facts

  • O’Melveny’s experience with landmark, master-planned communities enables our lawyers to assist clients with projects ranging from 30 acres to 300,000 acres.
  • Our long history of involvement in complex development and land-use matters means our lawyers have the credibility and relationships that are crucial in negotiating with city councils; planning commissions; boards of appeal; and county, state, and federal regulatory agencies. We have substantial experience with environmental laws such as CEQA and NEPA.
  • For more than 40 years, we have guided our private real estate investment trust (REIT) clients and their investors through shifting market conditions and legal frameworks. Our lawyers understand upREITs, downREITs, and rollups, as well as strategic transactions such as REIT mergers, taking REITs private, and share repurchase programs.
  • O’Melveny represents a wide variety of clients in the acquisition and sale of many of the largest real estate assets and portfolios in the United States. Our interdisciplinary teams coordinate planning solutions that incorporate tax, ERISA, banking, bankruptcy, securities, and corporate considerations.
  • O’Melveny has carved out a specialty in residential development and represents large and medium sized developers and home builders, as well as sources of capital, including commercial banks, Wall Street investment houses, opportunity funds and pension advisors. We have advised clients in diverse transactional structures, including joint ventures, limited partnerships, and limited liability companies in a wide variety of transactions, including participating and mezzanine debt, entitled and unentitled land development deals, acquisition and development projects, housing joint ventures, and apartment, multifamily, and condominium development and conversions. Our counsel has run the gamut from due diligence investigations and deal structuring through transaction-closing supervision, and asset management. In addition, we have served as the principal finance counsel for a number of residential developers and home builders.
  • We have worked on numerous transactions involving hotels, entertainment facilities, and mixed-use development projects around the world. Our clients include purchasers, sellers, and developers; ground lessors; major hotel-management companies; franchisors and franchisees; construction lenders; permanent lenders; and equity investors.

Industry Reach

  • Health Care Properties
  • Hospitality Industry
  • Joint Ventures
  • Land Use and Entitlement
  • Master-Planned Communities
  • Mezzanine Debt and Structured Finance
  • Mixed-use Developments
  • Real Estate Funds
  • Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs)
  • Residential Development and Finance
  • Retail Industry


Cook Inlet Region, Inc. Deutsche Bank The Macerich Company Kennecott Land Company Resmark Equity Partners SunCal Companies