30 April 2011
JMBM’s Global Hospitality Group® will kick off the 21st annual Meet the Money® hospitality finance conference by hosting a pre-conference roundtable among hotel industry leaders.
The Hotel Business® 2011 Executive Roundtable–Capital Ideas: Financing Solutions For Opportunistic Dealmakers will take place Monday, May 2 at the Sheraton Gateway Los Angeles.
28 April 2011
Hotel Lawyer with more on the long-term future of condo hotels.
It is interesting that I got calls from two reporters about the state of the condo hotel sector this week. One from a major daily paper doing background research, and the other from a well-respected industry publication, MortgageOrb, published by Zackin Publications (which also publishes Commercial Mortgage Insight and Secondary Marketing Executive.)
Condo hotels have not been in the news for some time, and as hospitality transactions heat up, many are now wondering how and when this niche product will be resurrected.
Phil Hall of MortgageOrb asked some excellent questions about the condo hotel sector and our interview, titled Jim Butler Checks Out the Condo-Hotel Niche, published in MortgageOrb’s Person of the Week column, is reprinted below.
Meet the Money kicks off Monday!!! And we have a way to help you stay connected . . .
Social media can help you connect with conference delegates, speakers and sponsors, making it easy to follow up afterward and continue talking about deals and opportunities. Use the hashtag (a simple way to group posts about the same topic) #MTM2011 in any of your tweets about the conference to let us know what you’re thinking about–what presentations and ideas you find useful, what you’ll be applying to your transactions in the next few years, and how you’re interpreting the research our experts have compiled. Join the conversation! We’re looking forward to hearing from you.
For more information about Meet the Money® 2011, visit www.MeetTheMoney.com
19 April 2011
The transaction market is heating up, and I am still getting calls and comments about my interview with Eric Stoessel in the National Real Estate Investor last month, where we discussed how the hotel transaction market is poised for a big turnaround.
I am also getting calls about Meet the Money®, the hotel finance conference that will take place in two weeks in Los Angeles. Registrants want to know: will debt and equity players be there? (The answer is, yes!)
But, first things first.
14 April 2011
Hotel Lawyer with good news for well-structured condo hotel deals. With the experience gained as legal and business advisors on more than 100 condo hotel and hotel condo projects, we have said for many years that this type of project has earned an enduring place in the landscape of hotel and real estate development. We still believe that.
The main issues of successful hotel mixed-use development are managing consumer expectations, fulfilling those expectations, and creating a viable mixed-use regime structure. In the case of condo hotels, a viable structure must work from an operational standpoint, be economically sustainable, and avoid triggering violations of Federal and State securities laws.
In a recent lawsuit, involving the Hard Rock Hotel San Diego, a federal district court in California ruled against the condo hotel buyers, finding that no securities laws were violated — the plaintiffs did not allege facts that would cause the condo hotel units to constitute “securities.” We see the case as affirming the effectiveness in defeating plaintiffs’ claims of two structural elements we have encouraged all our clients to use.
My partner, Catherine Holmes, who structures most of our condo hotel regimes, talks about these factors and the case below. Catherine advises clients in the specific business and legal aspects of condo hotel regime structuring and documentation, including securities compliance matters, documentation and training. In her article below, she talks about the case and what it means for us in the condo hotel world. It is good news!
31 March 2011
Debt and equity financing for hotels is back! Hotel transactions are rolling again!
And the Global Hospitality Group® of Jeffer Mangels Butler & Mitchell LLP (JMBM) has announced the 2011 Meet the Money® hotel finance conference to explore the latest opportunities in the capital stack with “Bridging the Gap and Facilitating the Flow of Capital.”
We hope you can join us May 2-4, 2011, at the Sheraton Gateway in Los Angeles for this important conference. Here is how to get all the information on time, place, program, speakers, and registration information. It is time to sign up now.
10 March 2011
Hotel Lawyer: JMBM’s Global Hospitality Group® announces publication of The HMA Handbook, a practical guide for negotiating Hotel Management Agreements for Hotel Owners, Developers, Investors and Lenders
LOS ANGELES–The Global Hospitality Group® of Jeffer Mangels Butler & Mitchell LLP (JMBM) today announced the release of The HMA Handbook, Hotel Management Agreements for Owners, Developers, Investors & Lenders. This e-book is a practical guide for decision makers who want pragmatic advice from veterans with business and legal perspectives on getting great hotel operators, negotiating a fair hotel management agreement (HMA), and terminating a bad one when the operator deserves it..
Co-authored by JMBM’s Global Hospitality Group® Chairman, Jim Butler, and Partner and Senior Member of the Group, Robert E. Braun, The HMA Handbook draws on articles from JMBM’s Hotel Law Blog and is the second book in JMBM’s “We Wrote the Book” series. In the book’s Foreword, James J. Eyster, professor emeritus of hotel finance and real estate at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration refers to the authors as lawyers who “work at the highest levels and cutting edge of the industry”.
28 February 2011
Click here for the latest articles on ADA Compliance and Defense.
Click here for the latest articles on Buying and Selling a Hotel.
Many investors view our current economic downtime as the perfect opportunity to purchase distressed hotel and motel assets at substantial discounts. Before any of these investors complete a purchase transaction, however, they should add one more item to their due diligence checklist: whether the hotel’s physical property and operating procedures comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and similar state statues.
23 February 2011
Important message about liability to hotel investors acquiring hotel assets and hotel owners renegotiating agreements with their operators:
Your hotel operator has most likely included indemnification provisions in the Hotel Management Agreement (HMA) designed to limit their liability for operating your hotel. On your operator’s draft of the HMA, it’s a good bet that a provision limiting YOUR liability does not exist in the agreement.
Don’t you think the liability limitations should be mutual? Here’s how to do it: the “”exculpation clause.”
15 February 2011
Click here for the latest articles on ADA Compliance and Defense.
The hotel lawyers at JMBM’s Global Hospitality Group® see a lot of ADA cases and believe the claims will increase tremendously in the next few years as a result of the current political climate, new regulations, higher priorities assigned by the Department of Justice, and passionate private litigants seeking to make the world ADA-compliant.
We get several calls every week from people served with new ADA complaints. Most of these hotel and restaurant owners just want to resolve the litigation at the lowest possible cost, including both the compliance cost and legal fees. Of course they don’t want to be sued by another plaintiff on the same, or similar, claim a week later, but that is a somewhat different problem that we also deal with.
JMBM’s ADA defense team has defended more than 450 ADA claims. We know almost all the plaintiffs, their strategies, their hot buttons, and their weaknesses. We know how to defend or settle cases with the least exposure to future claims and at the lowest all-in cost.
