Profile

Keith assists institutions in debt and equity investments; and in both controlling their legal spend and realizing "new" value from the legal team.

Raised in an Air Force family, Keith has lived in the Northeast, the Southwest and the West, including several years in Germany. He is a natural fit for clients with a national real estate focus.

Unique Lawyer Experience

• Primary author of Lenders360Blog.com, a legal blog covering issues affecting every type of lender and spans through both the "good times" and "tough times" of investment cycles.  Lenders360 also recognizes the importance of technology by focusing on trends and tips for maximizing technology in the business platform.
• Represented a new public REIT in one of five mezzanine notes issued in conjunction with the Inland Retail CMBS issuance (one of the first "CMBS 2.0" issuances).
• Represented a top 20 commercial mortgage lender in closing a series of new loans and rearrangements of current loans, which (taken together) represented 25% of its total mortgage lending allocation in 2010.
• Represented a top 10 (international) insurance company in closing the first loan in its new CMBS lending platform.
• Represented a subsidiary of an international investment manager in forming its commercial mortgage lending platform. 
• Engaged by several insurance companies in establishing co-lender commercial mortgage loan origination programs, and in creating loan closing and servicing agreements for the origination of commercial mortgage loans for the account of unaffiliated insurance companies.
• Engaged by a bank to be its "outside general counsel" (nationwide) to handle all of its workouts and oversee foreclosures, bankruptcies and related litigation of numerous homebuilder lines of credit.
• Engaged by a life insurance company as sole outside counsel for its new capital markets group. Initial deals: (i) mortgage note purchases; (ii) participation in a loan to a real estate fund; and (iii) A\B\C loan structure secured by senior living facilities in multiple states.
• Engaged by a life insurance company to design and implement its new "construction to perm" loan program. Initial deals: (i) a loan to build an apartment project in Oregon; and (ii) a loan to build a high-rise apartment project in Jersey City, New Jersey.
• Engaged by a government sponsored agency to be its sole "outside general counsel" (nationwide) for all of its apartment workouts and foreclosures. The engagement included creating a new technology solution focused on risk management of local counsel and data collection.
• Engaged by a life insurance company to handle the largest mortgage loan ever funded by it.
• Engaged by a national bank to design and create its single-family, builder finance loan program (and to act as regional counsel); and expanded engagement by another savings institution to handle, now on a nationwide basis, the majority of its single-family, builder finance loan program.
• Engaged by a life insurance company to review several hundred retail leases using a technology tool created by a Winstead affiliate.
  

Representative Experience

• Technology: Assists companies in addressing this question - how do you control legal costs and increase the value realized from your legal team? The answer is to reinvent the interplay between
  -legal services needed by the business platform with...
  -the strategic use of technology with...
  -the legal team
  Business platforms. Lawyers. Reinvented.
• Investments and Servicing: Representation of regulated lenders, pension funds and advisors, life insurance companies, loan servicers, finance companies, mortgage REITs, international investors and capital markets in the full range of debt and equity structures, products and property types, including low income tax-credit financings, structured leases, tenant-in-common financings, mezzanine debt, subdivision development and single-family builder lending, construction and mini-perm financing, portfolio and conduit lending, loan participations and syndications, cash-flow and equity participations, and commercial loan servicing (including special servicing); experience covers all business cycles – most recently workouts, foreclosures and related litigation
• Leasing and Development: Representation of institutional investors, developers, owners and tenants in acquisition, leasing, management issues, development matters (such as CC&RS) and dispositions of apartments, retail centers, office buildings, office parks and master-planned projects; representation of an apartment REIT in mixed-use development and acquisitions; representation of a national bank's community development corporation in affordable (low income) housing transactions; also, representation of major retail and office landlords and tenants in lease and sublease negotiations (including national lease expansion, with a focus on preservation of exit strategies)