Jeanne Katz is widely regarded as one of Texas’s principal lawyers for condominium, mixed-use, and large-scale real estate projects. She advises leading developers, institutional investors, owners, and platforms on high-profile transactions involving nuanced ownership arrangements, branded hospitality and residential communities, major acquisitions and dispositions, and transformative mixed-use assets. Clients turn to Jeanne for assignments without clear precedent, where success requires integrating legal, business, governance, operational, and financing considerations. They value her ability to spot risks, anticipate challenges, and craft practical strategies aligned with business objectives. Her technical skill, commercial judgment, and experience with highly structured transactions have made her a go-to advisor for complex property matters in Texas and nationally.
Jeanne also brings more than a decade of experience representing institutional lenders in commercial real estate financings, workouts, restructurings, and distressed asset matters. That finance-side perspective helps her surface underwriting, collateral, structural, and financeability concerns early. She is frequently engaged as borrower’s special counsel in construction and permanent financings, often while also advising on the underlying deal. Her ability to view transactions through both sponsor and lender lenses gives clients an advantage in structuring and closing complex deals.
Throughout her career, Jeanne has played critical roles on significant projects in Texas and beyond. Early in her career, she was the sole associate responsible for many day-to-day transactional aspects of Southern Methodist University’s creation of the George W. Bush Presidential Center. Since then, she has represented prominent investors, developers, operators, and financial institutions on landmark developments nationwide. Her work spans luxury branded residences, high-end condominium and mixed-use communities, institutional multifamily platforms, hospitality-integrated assets, major financings, and intricate ownership and governance frameworks. This breadth enables her to guide clients from initial structuring and capitalization through operation, disposition, redevelopment, and recapitalization, resolving issues before they impede completion.
The breadth of her work includes luxury branded residential and hospitality-integrated assets, complex condominium and mixed-use regimes, ground-up and redevelopment matters, institutional multifamily platforms, intricate ownership and governance arrangements, borrower-side construction and permanent financings, and acquisitions and dispositions involving substantial legal and business complexity. Clients value her ability to translate complicated frameworks into practical, market-ready documentation and steer them through the issues that arise in highly structured transactions, including detailed cost and liability allocation matters.
Jeanne’s reputation extends beyond client service. A recognized industry voice, she has spent nearly two decades writing and speaking on mixed-use projects, condominium law, commercial real estate finance, leasing, governance, and strategic structuring. She has presented at industry, lender, and CLE programs and authored papers, presentations, and reference materials for developers, financial institutions, owners, and community associations. Her sustained professional engagement reflects the depth of her technical knowledge and commitment to advancing the profession.
Jeanne has spent her entire legal career at the same firm since 2004, reflecting the continuity of her practice, long-standing client relationships, and role in high-value real estate matters.
Representative Experience
- Condominium Transactions: Representation of condominium developers in the development of residential and mixed-use condominium projects and the conversion of existing multifamily housing into residential condominiums; Representation of property owner and condominium associations in governance and administrative matters
- Development: Representation of property developers in the structuring and documentation of mixed use projects and the acquisition, disposition and development of improved and unimproved property
- Finance: Representation of institutional lenders in connection with debt and equity financing, including construction, acquisition and refinancing loans