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Overview

Robert Friedman is a real estate and business law attorney with more than 40 years of experience, primarily advising commercial developers, property owners, and tenants in a variety of transactional matters. Robert’s clients also include wealthy individuals, families, trusts, and small and midsize businesses.

Robert manages all aspects of legal work on behalf of clients, including strategy, negotiation, and documentation of agreements involving a wide variety of corporate and real estate transactions. His practice includes entity formation, acquisition, development, joint venture documentation, financing, and sales. He is experienced in handling real estate deals involving public-private partnerships.

Robert is known for his efficiency in handling large and complex transactions. His notable work includes representing a promote partner in connection with the sale by an existing equity partner of partnership interests in nine shopping centers. The total value of assets included in the complex transaction involving multiple partners and lenders was nearly $500 million. In another matter, Robert represented a joint venture in a $46 million, 75-year ground lease for the ownership and development of a shopping center adjacent to the expansion of a Los Angeles housing project. Robert negotiated the ground lease and disposition and development agreement, the joint venture agreement with an equity partner, and new markets tax credit financing in the complex matter involving a public-private partnership.

Robert is an active member of the American Bar Association, the Los Angeles County Bar Association, and the Beverly Hills Bar Association. He serves as president of the board of trustees of Turning Point School in Culver City, California.

Experience

  • Represented seller of $14.5 million retail property in Riverside, California, involving both ground lease and fee property in which ground lease interest was terminated at closing and property transferred in fee.
  • Represented purchaser of shopping center in Torrance, California, for $40 million, utilizing reverse exchange and involving tenants-in-common ownership as part of replacement property closing.
  • Represented purchaser of four residential properties for $64 million plus options to acquire two adjacent properties in Bel Air, California, at a later date for redevelopment and sale as one-of-a-kind trophy/environmentally sensitive estate.
  • Represented owner of medical office building in Brentwood, California, in $42.5 million refinancing with life insurance company lender.
  • Represented equity partner in connection with the acquisition of $24.5 million partnership interest with concurrent refinancing to restructure loan secured by $46.5 million marina property in Orange County.
  • Represented seller of spec residence in Los Angeles’ Pacific Palisades neighborhood for $83 million. The deal was the largest residential sale in Los Angeles County through July 31, 2021, and the highest price per square foot ever for a residence in Pacific Palisades.
  • Represented owners of four affiliated medical office buildings in non-simultaneous refinancings with large CMBS lender. The loan amounts were $42.5 million, $38 million, $21 million, and $8.3 million.
  • Represented purchasers of two mixed-use properties in Austin, Texas, both with joint venture equity, co-equity, and debt financing, for affiliates of same client. The purchase prices were $32 million and $24 million.
  • Represented owner with construction loan for the redevelopment of a shopping center in California’s San Fernando Valley. The loan amount was $40 million.
  • Represented landlord in negotiation of master lease of retail property in Venice, California. The total lease consideration was more than $20 million plus improvements to property in excess of $3 million.
  • Represented purchaser of shopping center in Los Angeles’ Panorama City neighborhood, including joint venture equity and debt financing, with purchase price of $98 million.
  • Represented seller of a rental house for $29 million followed by a deferred exchange of the proceeds and the acquisition of two companion apartment buildings with a total of 268 units for $71.5 million.

Professional & Community Involvement

  • American Bar Association
  • State Bar of California
  • Los Angeles County Bar Association
  • Beverly Hills Bar Association
  • Turning Point School, Culver City, California
    • President, Board of Trustees

Credentials

Education

  • Georgetown University Law Center (J.D., cum laude, 1978)
  • University of California, Berkeley (B.A., with honors, 1975)

Bar Admissions

Disclaimer

The information on this website is presented as a service for our clients and Internet users and is not intended to be legal advice, nor should you consider it as such. Although we welcome your inquiries, please keep in mind that merely contacting us will not establish an attorney-client relationship between us. Consequently, you should not convey any confidential information to us until a formal attorney-client relationship has been established. Please remember that electronic correspondence on the internet is not secure and that you should not include sensitive or confidential information in messages. With that in mind, we look forward to hearing from you.