Owning the Fee and the Leasehold Separately - Power of owning both on their own vs combining interest?

Hey guys,

As the title states, have been reading about families that own the fee of assets and most recently read a TRD article on the Slifkas who owned the fee (land) and leasehold (building) at 477 Madison. I was curious what are the benefits of having separate LLC owners for them and splitting them up? Seems maybe you can have one entity that owns the fee collect ground rent and receive stable income from another entity that is pretty much guaranteed and from a financing perspective have more favorable setups/maybe just get a loan against the leasehold so your overall leverage is low?

Does anyone have extensive experience with this, seeing this on other assets I have worked with as well and was curious what the benefits are.

Comments ( 5 )

3d
pudding , what's your opinion? Comment below:

It can be done as we've seen a few times in NYC . But it's tough to get a lender comfortable. Think about it - if the lease hold defaults, they technically lose nothing because they still own the fee. Sure they lost equity in the lease hold, but now the lender who foreclosed are still paying the people they took the building from.

2d
whatnext , what's your opinion? Comment below:

different tax profile, thus being held in different tax treatment ownership.

but those examples are few and far between so I think it's just the way it played out for current ownership. first they bought one interest then another became available

6h
Meaty_Bones , what's your opinion? Comment below:

I often wonder this too. An old coworker of mine said back in the day you could get more favorable financing terms this way. I really can't comprehend that today but obv times were different. Maybe thinking was retaining fee + control, then slice and dice the leasehold selling fractions to ppl at inflated prices that don't know any better.

Also seen it for estate planning purposes.

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