Allen J. Popowitz

Allen Popowitz chairs Brach Eichler’s Real Estate Law Practice Group and is a member of its Financial Services practice group in Roseland, New Jersey. His commercial real estate practice encompasses purchases and sales, development and refinancing transactions, commercial and private lending, leasing, and Section 1031 tax-deferred exchanges. He advises owners and developers on multifamily, industrial, retail, healthcare and office properties across the country. He also represents institutional and mezzanine lenders in documenting and closing acquisition, development and refinance loans.

Allen’s work includes transactions involving large, multistate property portfolios. He led a Brach Eichler team in the $1.9 billion sale of a client’s entire residential apartment portfolio—more than 16,700 units across New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware—which the firm identifies as the largest multifamily real estate transaction in New Jersey history. He has also handled a $72 million acquisition of 13 apartment complexes comprising approximately 5,000 units in Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania, and represented a client in the purchase of a REIT that owned a 200-unit apartment complex. His development work includes representing a client in a joint venture valued at more than $100 million to redevelop a large mall in central New Jersey.

Financing is another substantial part of his practice. Allen represented a borrower in a $160 million refinancing of 15 properties across four states and led a team on a $260 million loan transaction involving a 27-property portfolio across five states. Other matters include a $224 million loan transaction secured by a 33-property portfolio and a $200 million mezzanine loan for a borrower involving pledges of membership interests in entities that owned properties in multiple states. In a $298 million purchase of a downtown Chicago office building, he led the team handling the acquisition, a $229 million first mortgage loan from an institutional lender and a mezzanine loan from a Wall Street lender.

Section 1031 exchanges feature in several of Allen’s transactions. The Chicago office building served as replacement property in a tax-deferred exchange. He represented a client in the sale of 294 buildings through a series of transactions valued at nearly $731 million, which involved a complex exchange for several members of the selling entity. In another matter, he represented a client in the sale of 450 condominium units and an improvement exchange involving the purchase of 170 existing units and construction of 63 additional units. He also handled the acquisition of an approximately 350,000-square-foot corporate headquarters in Englewood Cliffs as replacement property for exchanges involving more than 20 separate entities.

His work on ownership and leasehold interests includes a $69 million acquisition of an interest in an entity that held the ground lessee’s interest in a Palo Alto office park. That transaction involved reviewing the ground lease and negotiating modifications with the ground lessor, as well as reviewing and negotiating changes to subleases.