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Real Estate Downturn Causes Lawyers to Adapt

By David P. Barker

Our country's prolonged financial crisis and relentless recession that began in 2006, became acute in late 2007, and continues to the present day, has hit real estate in unprecedented ways. The housing market continues to sag, as national home prices hit levels last seen in 2003, and the fourth quarter of 2008 saw a record low decline of 18.2%, according to the Feb. 24, 2009 edition of Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller Home Price Indices.

There are two strong forces working against a real estate recovery right now: Banks are not making new loans, and opportunistic buyers are not convinced we have hit the bottom yet. With a dramatic fall in the real estate market, the freeze of the credit markets, and now the deepening broad-based recession, law firms that relied heavily on transactional practices are being severely impacted. The transaction practice for most real estate lawyers started slowing down in the second half of 2007, but took a plunge in the fall of 2008. When the credit markets froze, commerce stopped the lifeblood of real estate attorneys: purchase and sale transactions, development and activities, and financing of real estate.

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