Bernstein Shur’s Real Estate Practice Group is the largest assemblage of real estate specialists in northern New England. The group’s attorneys represent some of the region’s largest developers, banks, and businesses, as well as hundreds of small and mid-sized family-owned businesses. Both Chambers USA (the definitive directory of business attorneys in the United States) and Best Lawyers in America (a highly-respected guide to legal excellence) rank Bernstein Shur's Real Estate Practice Group as the top practice of its kind in the state of Maine.

Our group has expertise in all aspects of real estate and real estate-related transactions, including:

• Large scale project planning and acquisition
• Tenant and landlord leasing representation (including complex ground leasing) for office, retail, shopping center, industrial, mixed and specialty properties
• Project governmental permitting and approval processes, including subdivision planning
• Project and construction financing and refinancing
• Structuring special financing (non-recourse, wrap, and other creative packages)
• Construction contracts and bonding
• Environmental risk assessment and solutions including wetlands and "brownfields" development
• Large-scale energy, hydro, and land conservation projects
• Family ownership planning and transfers
• Timberland acquisitions and sales
• Condominium creation and development
• Project entity and tax treatment (entity choice, creation, and tax structuring)

Our services also include representation of many local and regional prominent real estate brokers and agencies, resolution of complex boundary and real estate title matters, and distressed project solutions (workouts). We are also counsel to a number of national, regional and Maine banks and lending institutions. Large-scale projects include representation of:

• The buyer of 31 hydro-electric projects,
• The buyer of the state's largest conservation easement on 750,000 acres of Maine timberland,
• The project in all development aspects of Maine’s largest waste-to-energy plants,
• The lenders or developers of Maine's largest shopping malls

The firm’s attorneys and paralegals are especially sensitive to the timely turnaround necessary to move deals and projects toward closing and completion. We are experts in putting together the teams of professionals – inside and outside the firm – for our clients’ projects, and have a wealth of specialized talents elsewhere in the firm that can bring considerable value to our real estate clients, including our municipal, taxation, construction law, mergers and acquisitions, and corporate practice groups.

The firm’s clients also benefit from the in-house services of Monument Title Company (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bernstein Shur). Monument Title specializes in providing title insurance for commercial projects of all sizes and types ranging from the small business acquisition to many of the state’s larger energy, rail, utility, and housing projects. The company’s location in the firm’s office in Portland, Maine is conducive to quick turn-around and rapid response on title matters. Monument Title underwrites title insurance for First American, Ticor, Chicago, Lawyers, and Commonwealth. Escrow and other real estate-related services are provided.

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