Grant Habata
Grant Habata has worked as an attorney for over thirty years, both in-house and in private practice, focusing on real estate law (commercial and residential), corporate law, finance law, and estate planning. In addition, Mr. Habata has additional experience with non-profit entities, business litigation and taxation, with a passing familiarity with political law, intellectual property law and bankruptcy.
Mr. Habata has worked at several boutique real estate law firms, representing purchasers, owners, tenants, banks, thrifts, and governmental agencies in various real estate related transactions, and worked to revise some of the standard forms used in California for commercial and residential transactions. Some representative clients include a large hospital/medical group in Southern California, US subsidiaries of large international banks, well-known developers, and several large shopping center operators.
Mr. Habata spent over ten years at the California Association of Realtors (C.A.R.), writing several briefs in amicus curiae cases, as well as tracking and analyzing legislation, speaking about real estate law, and writing articles for various journals. He has provided advice to other real estate attorneys, real estate licensees and practitioners, and commercial entities, in addition to helping in acquisitions and formation of new entities for the parent organization (with over 200,000 members) and its subsidiaries.
Prior to working at C.A.R., he worked in-house at a venture capital company, and a commercial real estate and financing company, doing work as Assistant General Counsel, as well as serving as the Director of Finance and one of the Management Consultants at the company.
Currently, Mr. Habata serves on the board of the Housing Rights Center of Southern California (“HRC”) , and previously was President of the organization. While he is proud of the work that HRC continues to do, he has worked on fair housing issues for over twenty years at HRC and elsewhere.
Mr. Habata graduated from Berkeley Law (UC Berkeley), and also holds a Master’s in Public Policy from the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. Prior to those graduate programs, he graduated with honors from Harvard University.