In one sentence
A long-term lease of land on which the tenant owns the improvements, creating a leasehold estate a lender can mortgage.
The longer version
Under a ground lease, one party owns the land and another owns the building on it for decades. Lending against the leasehold requires the lease to be financeable: long enough term, lender protections, and cure rights.
Ground-lease financing adds diligence layers: the lease itself, estoppels from the ground lessor, and often a leasehold title policy, all of which become checklist lines.
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