Sham Guaranties Are Hard To Come By
In prior posts here and here, I highlighted the difficult position occupied by guarantors of real estate secured loans. In short, while California law extends very strong anti-deficiency…
LLC Managers Are Not Above The Law (Or Equity)
In an earlier series of posts, I flagged several mistakes frequently made by real estate LLCs. One of those mistakes is ignoring member rights and duties. That…
Junior Lienholders: Know When To Admit Defeat
As any real estate lender or investor can testify, holding a junior lien on real estate security can be perilous. Sure, the yields are higher (and…
Commercial Lease “Co-Tenancy” Clauses: Unconscionable, Penalty, or Enforceable?
When a court of appeal announces that it is tackling a new commercial lease issue for the first time ever in a published decision, it’s wise…
Alterations Don’t Always Render a Deed Void (or How NOT to do Foreclosure Investing)
Most real estate investors assume that when a deed is altered by someone other than the grantor, without the grantor’s knowledge or consent, before it is recorded,…
Construction Loans Gone Bad
In January, I posted about a recent decision from the California Court of Appeal (Fourth District in Riverside), California Bank & Trust v. Del Ponti, which addressed…
Loan Prepayment Fees: Normally Enforceable, But ….
Lenders sometimes impose fees triggered by the borrower’s payoff of the loan before the maturity date. Normally, the “prepayment fee” issue is a subject for negotiation at the outset of…
Guarantor Waivers Can Only Go So Far
As I mentioned in a prior post, guarantors are usually in a tough position defending litigation by the lender because most guarantor defenses are lawfully waived…
Perils of the Full Credit Bid
At a nonjudicial foreclosure sale (also known as a trustee’s sale) a lender is entitled to make a “credit bid” — i.e., bidding all or portions…
Seven Critical Mistakes Real Estate LLCs Make (and How to Avoid Them) — Mistake #7: Sinking Profits on Messy “Business Divorce” (Judicial Dissolution)
We’ve come full circle from MISTAKE #1: Choosing the Wrong Business Partners. Often, choosing the wrong business partners ends in messy divorce, otherwise known as judicial…