Duane M. Montgomery, attorney at Cozen O’Connor and partner at Gilchrist & Rutter
Duane M. Montgomery
Attorney at Cozen O’Connor, Gilchrist & Rutter
Mobile home parks for the most part have kept Duane Montgomery busy for the last two decades at Gilchrist & Rutter and Cozen O’Connor, having recently taken the helm as office managing partner for the latter firm’s Santa Monica office.
Among his clients are a major pension fund adviser who he declined to name as well as representing mobile home park owners, a major sector in California with about 5,000 such facilities across the state. Cozen O’Connor’s mobile home practice group in California helps these owners with everything from managing the nuts and bolts of processing rent increase applications to litigating against the government.
“The great thing about mobile home park investments, first of all, they fill a niche for moderate to low-income housing; especially that moderate area which everybody wants and needs these days, so that’s one thing that makes them attractive,” Montgomery said. “The other thing is that you have the best of both worlds from a real estate standpoint. You own the land –– the dirt –– but you don’t own a lot of the units [or are responsible] for the actual improvements on the homes… The unit owner owns the home.”
With a law degree from the University of Michigan, Montgomery, who started his career at Gilchrist & Rutter in 1997, specializes in secured financing matters, acquisitions and dispositions, title reviews, foreclosures, loan workouts, commercial leasing, finance lender licensing, joint venture matters and manufactured housing transactions.
In September 2017, Montgomery was among 10 other attorneys at Gilchrist & Rutter who joined Cozen O’Connor, in what appeared to be the latter firm’s strategy to beef up staffing in the midst of a real estate boom in Southern California. With this acquisition, Cozen O’Connor increased the size of its footprint in California from San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco to Santa Monica as well.—M.H.
