Successful real estate transactions are born from collaboration; and cooperation between all parties involved is critical. The work is fast-paced and exciting. Real estate attorney Jessica Y. Wang tells us what she likes about this sector of the law and how the pandemic has shaped it since 2020.

Can you describe your start at the firm?

I started as a Summer Associate at Hinckley Allen, and have continued my career with the firm since then.  Hinckley Allen is invested in their associates and wants to keep developing talent. The Firm has a formal mentorship program where everyone is assigned a partner mentor and a senior associate mentor when they come on board. They answer those “getting started” types of questions that help you navigate the culture. On an informal level, you start to develop deeper relationships with the senior attorneys you frequently work with.  They notice your potential and want to help you grow within the team.

Describe your work at Hinckley Allen.

I’m in the real estate group and my primary focus is on real estate finance. I represent both lenders and borrowers in real estate backed finance transactions across the country. We partner with local developers and also bank clients that have a national portfolio. The projects and properties we’re financing range from hotels to industrial warehouse spaces like Amazon facilities, data centers or multifamily housing. Years ago, the focus was more on retail space like shopping malls, but that has somewhat waned.

What do you like about working in real estate law?

I like this work because it is fast paced, from due diligence to drafting documents and negotiations ‒ you’re on a tight timeline. You have to work on the fly and solve problems quickly. It’s also satisfying because generally everyone tends to walk away happy from a closing. And it’s especially rewarding when our work helps our clients grow their business relationships.  Real estate law tends to be cooperative and the group here delivers great value to our clients.

How has your practice evolved and adapted during the pandemic?

There hasn’t been as marked of a difference for me because I’m not going to court or anything along those lines. Most of my business was conducted over the phone or via email, especially with our national clients. Our clients are facing unique challenges with the rise of remote work, so it has been nice to step in and go the extra mile to offer them assistance. We’ve worked as a firm to make things logistically easier for our clients, and to be adaptable to new needs.

What kinds of challenges has real estate faced related to the pandemic?

Early in the pandemic, a lot of our clients focused on accommodating their borrowers because for a long time the retail and hospitality industries took huge hits. Most of the banks we were working with were focused on offering grace and accommodating different payment structures for some of their clients to try and stop the bleeding. Since the early days of the pandemic, we have seen an increase in new loan originations, mainly in warehouse distribution centers and multifamily units.  From a legal perspective, the pandemic has created a greater focus on force majeure clauses related to construction deadlines and other covenants. Lenders and borrowers are now more attuned to the risk of a prolonged and mandated shutdown of retail and other businesses, which was previously unimaginable.

Tell us about an interesting deal that you’ve worked on.

A few years ago we worked on a construction loan to rehabilitate a historic building in Atlanta into a new hotel. It was an interesting deal because there were historic tax credits at the state and federal level, in addition to a mortgage loan and a mezzanine loan. Our team represented the mortgage lender.  The unique structure of the loan and the challenges of negotiating with additional stakeholders made the deal interesting from a legal perspective.  From a personal perspective, this project was especially satisfying because the hotel was an iconic historic building that had been used in movies and was a fixture in downtown Atlanta. The interior, however, was not living up to its full potential.  It was rewarding to work on the team that was able to finance the redevelopment of the building into something that matched its grand exterior.