William Ellis

William Ellis is a partner with Akerman LLP. He has over 40 years of transactional real estate experience handling workouts and restructurings, leasing, acquisitions, dispositions, financings, joint ventures and developments across the United States. He represents private equity funds, global financial institutions, investment banks, real estate investment trusts, investment funds and private developers based in New York and on the West Coast. Ellis has experience across asset classes, emphasizing distressed property, the hospitality sector, and industrial and commercial properties, and specialized expertise in cell tower, leasing and movie theaters.

Ellis was part of the Akerman team that represented a New York-based real estate investment company as purchaser/landlord, with partner Sixth Street, in a $265-million sale-leaseback transaction for a 31-acre, 575,000-square-foot Silicon Valley campus with Seagate Technology as seller/tenant. He also advised clients on acquiring a dozen build-to-rent residential communities throughout Texas, Georgia, Colorado and Florida, totaling more than 2,000 homes.

Ellis serves on the Executive Committee of the USC Real Estate Law and Business Forum, where he chairs panels on various aspects of real estate. He has been recognized by The Best Lawyers in America, Super Lawyers and The Legal 500.

He earned his J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School.

These are some of the reasons why we are honoring William Ellis with Connect CRE’s 2023 California Lawyers in Real Estate Award. The award celebrates real estate attorneys who have distinguished themselves in their practice and the larger community.