Course Section | Columbia Law School

Section Description Provided by Instructor

Limitations: No course pre-requisites. LLM's and non-law students may take the course.

Evaluations: No mid-term exam, no papers required. The course grade will be based on an open book, 8-hour take-home final examination. Class participation is encouraged, and significant class participation may be considered as a basis for improving (but not diminishing) students' final grades.

Writing credits are not available.

Course Description: The history of real estate financing transactions has been characterized by continually increasing complexity, which reflects growing and sophisticated needs of borrowers, lenders and financial markets. The course will begin with a review of basic mortgage finance and move on to a variety of more complex devices, involving both debt and equity transactions and comparing traditional financing methods with those used in more recent capital markets applications, including mortgage-backed securitization. We will examine various legal issues as they arise in the context of these evolving financing techniques, and will compare and contrast the worlds of real estate and corporate finance. In examining different types of transactions, we will focus on ownership and debt structures as well as risk-reward analysis as it applies to borrowers, lenders and other participants in these transactions so as to understand how various financing techniques are utilized to meet changing economic needs and evolving markets. We will also explore real estate finance in the context of recent crises in real estate capital markets, examining how the complexity of financing transactions may have contributed to the crisis, areas of potential reform and other current issues.

The course materials include extensive documents drawn from actual transactions as well as case law and other literature. Financial sophistication and mathematical ability are not required.