Real Estate New York

RENY: This recent demand for restructuring- and workout-related counsel—will it intensify as we go forward into 2008?

Shapiro: The lack of liquidity in the marketplace creates certain inevitable consequences. You have loans that are maturing and cannot be refinanced, and there's no other source of capital to repay those loans. You necessarily find yourself in a restructuring scenario. The only alternative to refinancing is foreclosure, and most financial institutions know that the last thing they want to do is to go into a business that is not their core business—real estate.

[IMGCAP(2)]Block: Even with respect to property owners who would be willing to sell a project or who intended at the outset to sell the project after a certain amount of time, it's not just their inability to refinance and retain that project as an existing financing matures. If a buyer is unable to obtain financing, then there is no buyer. It's not just refinancing work that has dried up; it has impacted the buying and selling of real estate, too.