Marisa Bocci

Practice Areas

Marisa Bocci is a partner in the firm's Seattle office. She works on a range of real estate transactional matters, including purchase and sale agreements, joint venture arrangements, and leasing. Her practice focuses on hotel and resort properties, commercial real estate assets, agriculture and agribusiness matters, and natural resource investment activities. Marisa advises asset managers and institutional investors on direct investing, co-investments, joint ventures, and other investment strategies relating to real assets in a variety of sectors. A number of Marisa's matters include the purchase or sale of real estate portfolios, whether in multiple serial transactions or in a single large-scale multi-property transaction; these transactions benefit from Marisa's legal project management training.

Marisa's hospitality industry experience includes the purchase and sale of hotel properties, particularly in the luxury or full-service sector. She also works on matters relating to the golf and restaurant sectors, including negotiation of restaurant operation agreements with high profile chefs. In addition to transactional work, she also advises on asset management issues relating to operations and handles negotiations with management companies, procurement services, and consulting and co-branding arrangements.

In the agriculture sector, Marisa has specific experience in matters relating to agribusiness investments. She handles transactions across the country involving the purchase, sale, leasing and financing of farmland, often on behalf of family office, pension fund, investment management, and private equity clients. Further, she advises clients on operational issues specific to the food packing and processing industry, including supply chain, labor, and AgTech matters. In addition, she also advises clients on agribusiness-related M&A transactions. Marisa regularly speaks and writes on agribusiness topics.

Marisa works on wind, solar, mineral, and timber portfolio matters for her institutional investor clients. Some of these activities are in conjunction with other agribusiness operations; others are standalone natural resource investments. She advises on water infrastructure projects, water rights dispositions and acquisitions (including trust arrangements), and private water share or water utility district arrangements. Of special interest, Marisa often advises clients on their Bureau of Reclamation water arrangements. Marisa works closely with natural resource investor clients on their sustainability initiatives and ESG-guided operational policies.

In her commercial real estate practice, Marisa advises both corporate and non-profit clients on their real estate needs, helping them manage their real estate facilities. She advises universities, churches, hospitals, and arts organizations on real estate purchase, sale, leasing, construction, financing, and joint venture matters. In the business sector, she assists national and international companies with their real estate portfolio needs, including purchase and development of greenfield manufacturing, R&D, and warehouse facilities.

A significant number of Marisa's matters involve foreign investment in U.S. real estate assets, particularly agricultural properties (timber, cropland, rangeland). She advises clients on federal and state foreign and corporate ownership regulations regarding ownership and operation of agricultural property. She also assists clients with their AFIDA and state-analogous disclosure filings, including work on behalf of clients with the U.S. Department of Agriculture regarding compliance matters.

Professional Memberships

American Agricultural Law Association, Board Member and Co-Chair of the Strategic Partnerships Committee

Seattle Shakespeare Company, Advisory Board

Jubilee Women’s Center, Board Member

Publications

Farm Leases: Twelve Important Things to Consider, ALI-CLE publication The Practical Real Estate Lawyer, July 2021

Growing Opportunities In The Carbon Field For Agriculture And Forestry, Power, Environment, Land, and Natural Resources Alert, October 2020

Real Property Practice Tip: Don’t Be Misled By the Title - The Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act of 1978 Applies to More Than Just Agricultural Transactions, by Marisa Bocci, Eric Jay and Kari Larson, WSBA Real Property Probate & Trust Newsletter, Winter 2017

Unmanned Aircraft and Agriculture - Legal Issues for Landowners, by Rod Hall, Marisa Bocci, James Insco, Tom DeCesar and Paulina Wu - WSBA Real Property Probate & Trust Newsletter, Spring 2016 (Vol. 43, Number 1)

Education