Vivek Chavan of DLA Piper in San Francisco. Courtesy photo.

Vivek Chavan, a seasoned real estate partner based in Northern California, has left Greenberg Traurig to join DLA Piper.

Chavan started practicing in the Bay Area in 2000 when he joined Morrison & Foerster's Palo Alto office as an associate. He then left the San Francisco-headquartered firm in 2011 to join Greenberg Traurig as a partner in its Silicon Valley office.

With regard to joining DLA Piper, Chavan said, “I wanted to find a firm that was as good as Greenberg Traurig in terms of real estate, but had a large breadth [in] both California and international,” noting that he was particularly attracted to DLA Piper's global presence.

According to Chavan, several of his clients that have national services have also grown internationally. DLA Piper's platform offers the “capability to help service those clients on a national base, but also introduce them internationally, continue to work with them and help them grow,” he explained.

Chavan represents clients in real estate transactions, including acquisitions, financings, development, and operation and disposition of timberland, residential, commercial and industrial real estate assets.

In the nearly two decades working in Northern California, he has worked with clients such as Stockdale Capital, Baber Investment Group and AvalonBay Communities Inc.

Last year, Chavan led a group of Greenberg Traurig attorneys on a deal for client Campbell Global and its institutional investors, as Campbell sold 1.1 million acres of East Texas timberlands for approximately $1.39 billion to CatchMark Timber Trust Inc. and a group of institutional investors.

“We are seeing a significant amount of foreign-bound investment into the United States in the commercial market,” Chavan said, explaining that there has been an influx of South Korean and Chinese investments in the U.S. real estate market, particularly in California and Texas.

“So you have both,” he added. “You have clients here looking to go outward, and you have clients here looking to bring investments in from international [investors].”

In San Francisco, Chavan will work closely with partner Stephen Cowan, who serves as managing partner of the firm's San Francisco office and co-chairman of its West Coast real estate practice, and partner Jeffrey Diener, who the firm hired in May from Paul Hastings. Diener previously served as vice chairman of Paul Hastings' San Francisco office.

DLA Piper, which saw its revenue jump by 7.7% to $2.84 billion last year, has been investing heavily in the California legal market, where it has seven locations and more than 350 lawyers, about 165 of whom are in Northern California.

A spokesman for Greenberg Traurig said that the firm wishes Chavan well.

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