George Lefcoe is a Professor of Law specializing in real estate, and has taught at the USC Gould School of Law since 1962. He holds the Ervin and Florine Yoder Chair in Real Estate Law.

His expertise is in real estate finance, development and land use planning, having worked with federal, state and local governments, and with firms and foundations in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan. His book, Real Estate Transactions, Finance, and Development (Lexis, 2009), is one of the most widely-used texts in the field, and is now in its Sixth Edition.

Lefcoe has served on many state and local government commissions, including the Regional Planning Commission of Los Angeles County and the City of Los Angeles Planning Commission. Since 1990, he has directed the USC Traveling Land Use Seminar, which has visited and met with civic leaders and real estate development professionals in many of the major cities of the world, ranging from Istanbul to Havana and, most recently, Porto, LIsbon and Cascais in Portugal.

He also is faculty director and regular panelist for the USC Real Estate Law and Business Forum, an annual conference which draws leading professionals in the field both as panelists and attendees. He was elected to membership in the American College of Real Estate Lawyers (ACREL), has spoken to real estate and local government sections of the American Association of Law Schools (AALS), delivered the Richard Babcock Memorial Lecture at the annual ALI/ABA Land Use seminar in Santa Fe, New Mexico, August 27, 2010, and is a member of the Urban Land Institute (ULI). Lefcoe also is a Member, Board of Directors, Center for Real Estate Studies, New York Law School.

Lefcoe’s articles are published in a number of law journals. His most recent articles are “Redevelopment in California: Its Abrupt Termination and a Texas-Inspired Proposal for a Fresh Start,” 44 Urban Lawyer 767 (2012) and “Competing for the Next Hundred Million Americans: The Uses and Abuses of Tax Increment Financing,” 43 Urban Lawyer 427 (2011).