Warren Kirshenbaum

As developers continue to realize that developable land is fast becoming a scare commodity, it will become more necessary to re-develop sites once home to industries that have long been dormant in our current economy, such as cotton mills, tanneries, leather producers, metal finishing, storage and smelting plants, rope manufacturers, and textile mills, to name a few. Accordingly, environmental remediation will become a more necessary and crucial development consideration.

Accordingly, I would like to highland one of our recent transactions:

ANNOUNCEMENT OF SUCCESSFUL TAX CREDIT AWARD AND SYNDICATION

Needham, Massachusetts, October 26, 2009

Warren A. Kirshenbaum, Esq. and the Cherrytree Group, LLC are pleased to announce their successful representation of two (2) Massachusetts Realty Trusts for whom they secured a large tax credit award of 2009 Massachusetts Brownfields Tax Credits (the "Tax Credits"), and then facilitated and closed on the sale of these Tax Credits to a Tax Credit Syndicator.

Brownfields Tax Credits are issued by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to developers who have successfully remediated environmentally contaminated sites. The tax credits are issued as a percentage of the developer's costs incurred in the environmental cleanup of the site. We congratulate our clients for their successful remediation and development of these environmentally damaged sites, located in important development areas in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

If you have any questions about commercial real estate, development financing, or tax credit transactions, please feel free to contact Warren directly at 781-239-8900 or wkirshenbaum@oarlawyers.com.

Warren A. Kirshenbaum, Esq.

Cherrytree Group, LLC

● 160 Gould Street, Needham, Massachusetts 02494-2300 ● Tel: 781-239-8900 ● Fax: 781-239-8909 ● WEB: www.oarlawyers.com ● BLOG: http://distressedassets.wordpress.com

It may be hard to digest, but if you read the tea leaves, the financial titans and intellectual powerhouses that served in both the Bush Administration and now serve in the Obama Administration may have approached the resolution of our economic issues differently but they seem have reached the same conclusion. We need Wall Street to be strong; New York needs to remain the financial capital of the world.

Now that the US automobile industry is in tatters, and we no longer manufacture much of anything in the US anymore, we need to lead the world in some areas for the US to remain a dominant power. If that means Wall Street bankers, traders, bond salespeople, analysts, and even risky financial inventors are overpaid, or derive their paychecks from the US taxpayer, even while working people are driven from their homes and business, then that's what needs to happen.

I do not condone the policies, but I am starting to understand why they are in place.

Notwithstanding the inherrent plausibility behind the conspiracy theories of Goldman Sachs alumnae being so prevalent and influential in crafting government policy and directing stimulus funding to 85 Broad Street; the power of Chase's Jamie Dimon; and the compelling writing of Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi, I can't explain why Lehman was allowed to fail and Goldman was protected at all costs, why Wachovia and Washington Mutual were allowed to collapse while Citibank and Chase are receiving an outstretched government hand, other than to speculate that Lehman, WaMu and Wachovia were not global powerhouses, nor would they ever be, while Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase have been, currently are, and will continue to be the world's largest and most powerful banks. That is, quite simply, good for the business of America.

Now, if they can use government intervention to their advantage, then so can we.

In the past year, arguments along the lines of whether the "too big to fail" policy has led to the socialism of America have taken grasp, and there is certainly veracity in those arguments. Discussion points, however, there are many -- solutions on the other hand seem to be in short supply.

The only real way to get capitalism back into the hands of the people is to show that it still works. Distressed asset investing, and the business of profiting from the acquisition of assets at below market prices is a clear way back to capitalism. Taking the assets that the Goldman and Chase bankers have decimated in their quest for a bigger bonus and profiting from these assets is the antithesis of "too big to fail". It's the "small enough to suceed" argument. And in our business plan we are not putting homeowners out on the streets or engineering a financial collapse. We are rehabilitating and repositioning weak assets, squeezing cash flow from those assets, and yes, seeking to profit from the return to full valuation of those assets. That is capitalism, and that, more than ever is good for America and good for business --- and nobody gets hurt.

Needham, Massachusetts, May 11, 2009

Warren Kirshenbaum is pleased to announce the refinancing into permanent debt of a subordinated construction loan for the Middleton Family Medicine Medical Facility, using the US Small Business Administration's ("SBA") 504 program. The 504 Program provides growing businesses with long-term, fixed-rate financing for major fixed assets, such as land and buildings. Typically, a 504 project includes a loan secured with a senior lien from a private-sector lender covering up to fifty percent (50%) of the project cost, a loan secured with a junior lien from an SBA approved lender (backed by a one-hundred percent (100%) SBA-guaranteed debenture) covering up to forty percent (40%) of the cost, and a contribution of only ten percent (10%) equity from the small business being helped. In this transaction, the loan was funded by New England Certified Development Corporation, an affiliate of the BDC Capital Corporation.

If you have any questions about commercial real estate, development financing, or SBA 504 refinancings, please feel free to contact Warren directly at 781-239-8900 or wkirshenbaum@oarlawyers.com.

We buy and sell hopes and dreams all the time, particularly the American Dream. We store these hopes and dreams in the financial markets and over the past 70 plus years, our financial or capital markets have fueled growth, innovation and development, and spurred us into becoming an ownership society. Unfortunately, just as the financial markets rise based upon confidence, hopes and dreams, they also fall based upon a lack of confidence, hopelessness and dashed dreams. That's just the way it is. But real estate is an actual investment that you can see, touch, and care for. In real estate, whether you're building, selling, buying, investing, or looking to live there, the fundamentals still remain, and the market will cycle back. That too, is just the way it is.

Granted, banks have tightened their lending standards, they are holding onto their cash and finally settling for the spread between what they borrow for and what the money market pays, instead of the returns they sought in the speculative and risky collateralized debt market. That's restricting capital flow right now, but there are still markets that are poised to expand, particularly with the passing of some exciting new legislation. On July 30, 2008, President Bush signed into law the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 (the "Stimulus Act"), which provides incentives intended to create greater capital flow into both the affordable and market rate areas of the real estate marketplace. Clearly, other than with government intervention, the capital markets need to work through the shock of the so-called "subprime bust" and ascertain the true monetary cost of the failure of the collateralized instruments that greased the capital markets, but this is a forward-looking article.

On the commercial side

These are not ordinary times, so there's a need to expand one's range of thinking. For those with investment properties, mixed use properties, two family homes or small buildings with subsidized tenants, or even for estates, trusts or other investors in real estate assets that desire tax advantaged income, the population of potential financing sources and investment opportunities may now include some that traditionally attracted a different clientele. In the past decade, or more, most new housing production has been spurred by M.G.L. c.40B, §§20-23, the statute more commonly known as Chapter 40B, which allows an override of municipal zoning authority to promote affordable housing. 40B creates an expedited permitting procedure whereby an applicant approved by a State or Federal Housing Program, such as the Department of Housing and Community Development ("DHCD") may make a single application to a local Zoning Board ("ZBA") for a comprehensive permit instead of navigating through multiple applications within the Town over a staggered period of time. The ZBA is subjected to a streamlined procedure, and a denial (or imposition of uneconomic conditions) by the ZBA can be appealed to the Housing Appeals Committee ("HAC"), a unit of DHCD . To be permitted under 40B, 25% of the housing units in a proposed development must be affordable.
There are various provisions in the Stimulus Act that have the potential to create additional funds to be available for investment, commercial or development real estate than were available previously:

• The Stimulus Act may allow tax credits to be available to many commercial borrowers that turned to FHA funding sources during the current credit crunch;

• For investors previously adverse to tax credit investing, the repeal of certain AMT limitations may be a positive factor;

• Additional loan funding may be available as a result of the increase in bond volume issuance authority that the Stimulus Act allows, as well as the Multifamily Housing Bond "recycling" provision, which allows bond issuers, under certain circumstances, to re-use bonds that have been repaid to back new loans. These provisions provide entities, such as MassHousing, with additional funding capability; and

• The temporary increase in housing credits allocated to the states, as well as the fixed 9% tax credit rate may allow more equity to be available to projects that may previously have been financially infeasible due to pricing declines in the equity market during this credit crunch.

For Residential Buyers and Sellers

It is more difficult to receive funding, and certainly the down-payment requirements and verification of income procedures have been thoroughly overhauled by the underwriting departments of most banks. Notwithstanding the current restrictive financing environment, there are many programs catered to the various strata of borrowers and property types that are available; interest rates are still historically low; and home values are more in line with reality than we have seen in the past decade. Additionally, the federal government has also made FHA funding available to a wider range of the borrowing population, and has temporarily increased conforming loan amounts in high cost areas, such as ours. These factors, when coupled with the Stimulus Act's $7,500 break for first-time homebuyers, and the creation of a program that will allow some borrowers to cancel their existing mortgages and replace them with new fixed-rate loans lasting at least 30 years (for 90% of the property's current value) may create the stimulation effect in the residential market we have been hoping for, or dreaming of.