Distressed Debt & Real Estate Workouts

Overview

We work with lenders, servicers, and other financial institutions on workout transactions across all asset classes, including real estate, retail, hospitality, manufacturing, financial, and commercial business. We provide effective strategies to protect our clients’ rights and maximize the recovery of their non-performing assets.

We have handled billions of dollars in restructurings and workouts, from acquisitions and securitization to foreclosures, sales of whole loans and loan pools, bankruptcy, and dispositions. We are industry leaders in distressed commercial debt litigation, including aspects such as judicial foreclosure, springing recourse guaranty, lender liability, and seeking federal receivers on behalf of secured creditors.

Our team represents you in every aspect of distressed commercial debt and real estate workouts.

Representative experience

• Loan servicing arm of one of the largest diversified financial services institutions in the United States: Representing in workouts, notes sales, foreclosures, and state, federal, and multi-jurisdictional receiverships for more than 60 commercial properties with notes ranging in value from $500 thousand to $84 million—the collateral securing these loans included commercial properties and hotels located in Illinois, Wisconsin, Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia
• Illinois Bank and its loan servicer: Representing an Illinois bank and its loan servicer defending against allegations of preferential and unauthorized transfers from a debtor in a case
• Dallas-based portfolio management company: Representing in the receivership, REO transactional work, and guaranty claims against the principal owners of a $28 million property in Rhode Island and in prosecuting a federal receivership and guaranty action of a $5 million industrial/commercial property in Massachusetts
• Largest mixed-use office, commercial, and industrial complex in Rhode Island: Successfully sought appointment of state court receiver for complex, and currently prosecuting recourse carve-out and waste claims totaling $16.8 million against borrower principals related to defaults of loan in Rhode Island Federal District Court
• Philadelphia-based real estate finance company: Representing in numerous trust preferred securities transactions across the country—ranging from $25 million to $200 million to public and private companies, home builders, real estate investment trusts (REITs), and other borrowers—and the subsequent restructuring of several transactions
• Banking association: Nationwide coordinating counsel in trustee capacity for all residential mortgage-backed securities litigation, including wrongful foreclosure, deceptive trade practices, condemnation, and subprime mortgage litigation
• Federal agency: Managed and negotiated the liquidation of loans in transactions involving single-family, multifamily, and commercial mortgage pools with the principal amount outstanding in excess of $10 billion

Recognition

• Nixon Peabody has been named a Tier 1 National firm for Real Estate Law in the 2025 edition of Best Law Firms®.