Steve Friedman

Steve Friedman, CRE, FRICS, is a tax director with more than 30 years of tax planning experience.  Steve’s clients cross all property types, including residential and commercial land development, single family for-sale, single family rental, and multifamily rental and for-sale. He advises real estate developers, operators, managers and their investors, whether domestic or foreign, taxable or tax-exempt, institutional or retail. He brings a wealth of technical knowledge and practical experience to transactional tax planning and execution, whether wholly domestic or cross-border. Steve has extensive experience in structuring, planning and executing transactions through a myriad of forms of legal ownership, including real estate investment trusts, taxable REIT subsidiaries, C corporations, S corporations, affiliated corporations that join in the filing of consolidated returns, joint ventures, limited liability companies and partnerships.

Steve’s background includes tax advice and planning for more than two dozen publicly traded REITs engaged in multifamily ownership, operation and management, regional shopping center and neighborhood retail ownership, leasing and management, CBD and suburban office, and lodging and hospitality. He also has an extensive background in evaluating tax accounting methods and reporting on the financial statement impact of real estate transactions and operations for these ownership types. Through the Great Recession, Steve efficiently restructured more than $5 billion in debt on behalf of financially distressed borrowers.

Steve is a frequent and well-known speaker on tax, industry and financial matters affecting the real estate business. He has spoken several times on technical matters both to the Real Estate and Partnership Committees of the American Bar Association Tax Section. He is a past chair and member of the Advisory Board of the William & Mary Tax Conference and a member of the Program Committee for the Pacific Coast Builders’ Conference. He is an active member and Council cochairman of the Urban Land Institute. Steve also lectures on real estate and joint venture matters at the Steers Center for Global Real Estate at Georgetown University.

Prior to joining CohnReznick, Steve was the U.S. Senior Vice President for Finance and Tax for a privately held multinational real estate private equity and development firm. Previously, Steve served as a Principal in the Real Estate Practice of a Big Four firm. During that time, he worked in the National Tax Department, helping lead the firm’s tax advice to companies and investors across the real estate spectrum.