Real Estate & Finance Counsel — New Jersey

A New Jersey-based net-lease real estate investment and capital-markets platform — over $1 billion in assets under management, with an affiliated REIT and a DST syndication business — is hiring an in-house Real Estate & Finance Counsel. You will run commercial real estate acquisitions and dispositions end-to-end: drafting and negotiating the purchase and sale agreement, owning the due diligence, and executing the closing — frequently as the sole attorney on the deal.

The portfolio is single-tenant, net-lease (NNN) industrial and medical real estate, leased long-term to creditworthy and investment-grade tenants, with deal sizes typically between $20 and $100 million. Alongside transactions you will draft and update offering documents (PPMs) and DST documentation, support real estate financings (loan documents, bridge and mezzanine structures), and manage portfolio-level tenant notices (estoppels, SNDAs, renewals). The team is lean, entrepreneurial and an active user of AI tools to draft and review at scale.

You report directly to the Chief Legal Officer. The role is hybrid — 2–3 days a week in the New Jersey office, an easy commute from New York City.

• 5–10+ years of hands-on transactional commercial real estate, owned end-to-end (PSA through closing)
• Admitted and in good standing in New Jersey and/or New York
• A background at a mid-size firm or in-house with a real estate sponsor — a well-rounded operator, not an over-specialised big-law profile
• Due diligence done personally: title, survey, environmental (Phase I), property condition, zoning and lease review
• Comfortable as the sole attorney on a deal, with autonomy and little oversight
• Practical, business-first, and comfortable working alongside AI drafting tools

Strong differentiators (not gates): DST / 1031 syndication and PPM experience, and real estate finance depth (loan documents, bridge financing). An exceptional transactional lawyer without DST experience will still be considered.

Compensation: approximately $200,000 base plus a ~25% bonus (around $250,000 in cash), with equity upside tied to a targeted 2027 public listing of the affiliated REIT that could take the package toward ~$350,000.