Joshua Stein

Practice Areas

Commercial real estate, including purchases and sales; borrowing and lending; ground leases; space leases; and joint ventures. Expert witness work in these areas, e.g., nonrecourse clauses, ground lease rent resets and other issues, intercreditor disputes, guaranties, closing conditions. Mediation and arbitration of commercial real estate disputes.

Career

Established Joshua Stein PLLC in 2010, after 20+ years at a global law firm preceded by two earlier positions at regional law firms.

Professional Memberships

Americal College of Real Estate Lawyers; American College of Mortgage Attorneys; Association for Real Property and Infrastructure; Urban Land Institute; Real Estate Board of New York; Mortgage Bankers Association of New York (board member); American Bar Association; New York State Bar Association; California State Bar.

Publications

New Guide to Ground Leases, a 3-volume work to be published in 2023 (www.groundleasebook.com); Stein on New York Commercial Mortgage Transactions; Practical Guide to Real Estate Transactions; editor, Commercial Leasing treatise published by New York State Bar Association (2 volumes); Lender's Guide to Structuring and Closing Commercial Mortgage Loans; Guide to Troubled Commercial Real Estate Loans for Lenders and Borrowers. Author of 300+ articles on commercial real estate practice. Regular columnist for www.forbes.com, covering commercial real estate law and practice. Copies of hundreds of Joshua's articles can be found at www.joshuastein.com.

Clients

Joshua represents a wide range of clients, ranging from marquee real estate investors and developers to individuals opening their first retail location or creating a small family limited liability company. Many client references are available upon request.

Work Highlights

Recent transactions include:

• Sale of one of the last manufacturing buildings in Manhattan;

• All office leasing for the owner of a Park Avenue Class A office building;

• Special counsel for the ground landlord of part of a mixed-use development project in Brooklyn;

• Representation of 50% owner in the successful sale of a large rental apartment building mired in intrafamily litigation for nearly 10 years;

• Purchase of a defaulted loan in the Hamptons;

• Ground lease of a development site in Chelsea, representing the owner/landlord;

• Engagement by the tenant/developer on that Chelsea project to represent the tenant/developer in negotiating and closing a ground lease on a nearby project;

• Sale of a development site in the Bronx;

• Purchase and later sale of a 200-unit apartment building in Austin, Texas;

• Many restaurant and retail leases in Manhattan and Brooklyn, representing both landlords and tenants;

• Ground lease of a hotel site in Tribeca;

• Ground lease for a mini-storage building in the Bronx;

• Ground lease for development of a distribution facility in Jersey City;

• Negotiation of a supermarket lease in a building to be built in Manhattan;

• Series of ground leases in Los Angeles and San Francisco for development of electric vehicle charging stations;

• Mortgage loan and preferred equity negotiations for a $500M+ project in Lower Manhattan on behalf of the borrower;

• Redocumentation of a mixed-use multi-site development project in Florida, with six ground leases and a complex reciprocal easement agreement to tie everything together;

• Later sales of that same project in pieces;

• Purchase of a marina on Long Island;

• Long-term leasing of a whole building in West Midtown Manhattan, intended to be demolished; and

• Ownership vehicles for a series of acquisitions in upstate New York.

Expert in these Jurisdictions

California and New York

Experience

In addition to Joshua's legal work for clients and his publishing -- all described above -- he has been active in the legal profession. Joshua chaired the New York State Bar Association Real Property Law Section for the year ending in May 2006. Since 1997, he has chaired the Practising Law Institute’s annual two-day seminar on commercial real estate financing. For several years he taught commercial real estate law as an adjunct professor at Pace University Law School.

Personal

Member, Board of Trustees, Bronx Museum of the Arts (Chair, Governance and Nominating Committee). Art collector, with special emphasis on paintings of buildings. Two daughters: Helaina, a tenured US foreign service officer; and Julia, a researcher for OKCupid.com.

Education

Awards