Credentials at a Glance

endorsed

“Vinson & Elkins provides a solutions-based approach to every matter, and focuses on achieving clients’ desired outcomes at every juncture.”

– Chambers USA Respondent

Ranked

REITs (Nationwide)

– Chambers USA, 2018 – 2025

ranked

Real Estate – Real Estate Investment Trusts: REITs

– The Legal 500 US, 2018–2025

Where We Excel


For more than 35 years, lawyers in Vinson & Elkins’ Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) practice have been helping clients achieve their business objectives. After adding five REIT industry veterans to the firm’s practice in early 2016, V&E now boasts one of the largest teams of dedicated REIT practitioners in the industry. Our lawyers regularly represent issuers, underwriters, sponsors and other real estate industry participants in connection with REIT formation and capital markets transactions, including initial public offerings, Rule 144A equity and debt offerings, and other public and private offerings of equity and debt securities. In addition, the V&E team has extensive experience advising REIT clients, special committees and other industry participants with respect to merger and acquisition transactions, joint venture formations, restructurings, spin-offs and recapitalizations, including transactions involving publicly traded REITs, public non-traded REITs, externally managed REITs, private REITs, C-corporations, and partnerships.

Our team has experience advising clients with respect to virtually every asset type that can be owned and financed through a REIT structure, including office buildings, retail properties, industrial properties, data centers, apartment properties, single-family residential properties, hotels, storage facilities, health care facilities, senior housing facilities, infrastructure assets, student and military housing, timberland, farmland, marinas, commercial and residential mortgage loans and mortgage-backed securities and other mortgage-related assets. We are experienced in structuring transactions utilizing the UPREIT and DownREIT structures in order to maximize tax efficiency for the parties in connection with REIT formation transactions and property acquisitions.

The lawyers in our REIT practice stay apprised of industry trends and are knowledgeable about the legal requirements for complex REIT structures and transactions. Our REIT practice involves lawyers in our corporate and securities, tax and real estate practices, while offering clients access to the resources of a full-service law firm with nationally ranked capital markets, mergers and acquisitions, shareholder activism defense, executive compensation, litigation and environmental practices. In addition, our REIT lawyers work hand-in-hand with our firm’s private equity and fund formation lawyers when a private equity fund is structured as a private REIT, when a private REIT subsidiary is incorporated into a fund structure for tax planning purposes, or when a sponsor seeks to develop a private equity structure that can seamlessly transition to REIT form in connection with a future initial public offering.

Our lawyers have been involved in several innovative REIT developments including: serving as issuer’s counsel for the first Canadian trust structured to be treated as a U.S. REIT for U.S. federal income tax purposes under the inversion rules of the Internal Revenue Code; obtaining private letter rulings that gain from the sale of carbon credits by a timber REIT is qualifying REIT income and electrical transmission and distribution systems are qualifying REIT assets; structuring REITs to purchase and rent pre-owned single family residences; and serving as counsel to the financial advisor and dealer-manager in the first passive listing on the NYSE by a public non-traded REIT.

Our lawyers are active members of industry associations, such as the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts, and write and speak frequently on topics of interest to the REIT community.

To receive our quarterly “REIT Series” e-newsletter and other information related to Real Estate Investment Trusts going forward, please subscribe here. To view previous “REIT Series” presentations, follow this link.

Experience

  • Preferred Apartment Communities, a REIT owner and operator of Class A multifamily properties and grocery-anchored retail assets, in its $5.8 billion acquisition by Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust, Inc.

  • WPT Industrial Real Estate Investment Trust in its $3.1 billion sale to Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust, Inc.

  • Jera Asset Management and Setzer Properties in formation of a joint venture with the Australian Superannuation Pension Fund, including the roll-up of a seed portfolio of net leased transportation terminal and logistics properties

  • WPT Industrial Real Estate Investment Trust in its $370 million contribution of its U.S. distribution and logistics properties to a joint venture with the Investment Management Corporation of Ontario

  • Global Medical REIT in its $18.1 million acquisition of Inter-American Management resulting in a management internalization

  • Preferred Apartment Communities in its $179 million internalization of Preferred Apartment Advisors and NMP Advisors

  • New York Mortgage Trust in its $50 million investment in Headlands Asset Management Fund III

  • Alpine Income Property Trust, Inc. in its $143 million initial public offering of common stock

  • TPG RE Finance Trust, Inc. in its $233 million initial public offering and multiple follow-on offerings

  • Underwriters to Clipper Realty Inc. in its $88 million initial public offering of common stock

  • Global Medical REIT Inc. in its $150 million initial public offering of common stock and all of its subsequent capital markets transactions including five follow-on underwritten public offerings with an approximate transactional value of $343 million; ATM offerings; and its $77 million public offering of Series A cumulative redeemable preferred stock

  • TPG RE Finance Trust, Inc., as special tax counsel, in its $932.4 million collateralized loan obligation (CLO)

  • Owens Realty Mortgage in the activism campaign by Freestone Capital

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At Vinson & Elkins, we bring decades of knowledge, skill, and experience to our clients’ most complex legal matters.

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Insights

Events

Paige Anderson to Speak on BARBRI Webinar

Partner Paige Anderson will speak on BARBRI’s live video CLE program, “Mastering Public and Private REITs: Key Tax, Structuring, Financing, …

September 22, 2026

September 22, 2026 • 1-minute read

Events

Paige Anderson and Vinay Prabhakar to Present on REIT Tax and Data Centers in Upcoming myLawCLE Webinar

Partners Paige Anderson and Vinay Prabhakar will present on myLawCLE’s live CLE program, “REIT Tax in the Data Center Era: …

September 18, 2026

September 18, 2026 • 1-minute read

Client Alerts

QOZ Compliance Just Got Teeth: Treasury Proposes Daily Penalties and Mandatory Reporting for Qualified Opportunity Funds

On September 11, 2026, the Department of the Treasury (“Treasury”) and the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) published proposed regulations (REG‑116506‑25) …

September 15, 2026

September 15, 2026 • 5-minute read

Client Alerts

Navigating the New QOZ Landscape: IRS Notice 2026-40 Explained

On June 18, 2026, the Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service released Notice 2026-40 (the “Notice”), announcing …

June 29, 2026

June 29, 2026 • 6-minute read

Client Alerts

Proposed Preemption of State Blue Sky Laws Could Benefit Non-Traded REITs

On May 19, 2026, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) issued a proposing release titled “Registered Offering Reform” that, among …

May 21, 2026

May 21, 2026 • 5-minute read

REITs Background Decorative Image

Events

Vinson & Elkins Sponsors the TCG Building Futures Gala

Tannenbaum Capital Group (TCG) and Vinson & Elkins, united by a shared commitment to community impact, are proud to present …

April 9, 2026

April 9, 2026 • 1-minute read

Client Alerts

IRS Issues Section 892 Final Regulations Impacting Foreign Government Investment in U.S. Real Estate

On December 12, 2025, the United States Department of the Treasury (“Treasury”) and the Internal Revenue Service released final regulations (the “Final Regulations”) under Section 892 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended (the “Code”).

December 18, 2025 • V&E Tax Update

December 18, 2025 • 4-minute read

FinCEN Releases New Guidelines, Highlighting the Factors To Be Considered When Bringing Enforcement Actions Background Decorative Image
News & Achievements