Real Estate Insights
Analysis and practical guides on real estate.
70 articles, checklists, and guides on real estate law, written by the attorneys at MC Law. Every piece is general information, not legal advice—for a specific matter, contact the firm.
Public and Subsidized Housing: Vouchers, Public Housing, and the Rules That Govern Your Tenancy
Subsidized housing runs on a body of federal law that most tenants and many lawyers never encounter, and its most important feature is that a tenant facing termination usually gets a hearing that private-market tenants do not. This article explains the difference between tenant-based vouchers, project-based assistance, and public housing, and why the difference decides almost everything else. It covers how rent is calculated, what an interim recertification is and why failing to report a change is the most common cause of a repayment demand, and what the grievance procedure and informal hearing actually provide. It works through the one-strike rule and Department of Housing and Urban Development v. Rucker, the good cause standard that applies in subsidized housing but frequently not in private tenancies, the reasonable accommodation duty that changes outcomes more often than any other tool, and the appeals available at every stage.
Foreclosure Defense and Loan Workout Toolkit
This toolkit assembles the working documents of a residential mortgage default, on both sides of the file. It contains the RESPA request for information and notice of error templates that produce the loan file, an arrears and fee audit worksheet, the complete loss mitigation application package and the dual tracking assertion that stops a sale, model answer and affirmative defenses for judicial states, a foreclosure discovery request set, the temporary restraining order framework for nonjudicial states, and the exit documents—short sale approval terms, deed in lieu conditions, and the surplus funds claim. It also supplies the servicer-side compliance review that prevents most of the errors it identifies.
Real Property Transactions Toolkit: Title, Survey, Easements, and Closing
A real property transaction is a diligence exercise with a closing attached, and every problem that surfaces at closing was disclosed weeks earlier in a document somebody filed without reading. This toolkit sequences the work: the agreement and the diligence period it buys, the title commitment converted into a task list and a risk list, the survey that reveals what a title search cannot, the zoning and environmental review, the lease and tenant analysis, the financing and the lender's requirements, the tax structure including a like-kind exchange, and the closing itself with the wire verification step that prevents the industry's most common uninsured loss. It closes with post-closing obligations and the ownership questions that arise afterward. It ends with the closing itself and the post-closing recording and policy review that confirm you bought what you thought you were buying.
Short-Term Rental Toolkit: Permits, House Rules, Agreements, and Neighbor Response
This toolkit contains the worksheets, letters, and operating documents a short-term rental host needs, ordered from the research that should precede a purchase through the notices that arrive when something goes wrong. It includes a four-question feasibility worksheet covering the city, the association, the lease or mortgage, and the insurer; an insurance disclosure letter written to produce a coverage answer in writing; a tax authority inquiry that exposes the levies platforms do not remit; an HOA document request; a dated safety inspection log that becomes a premises liability defense; house rules and rental agreement terms drafted to be enforceable; the notices that must be posted; a neighbor introduction letter; scripts for a rules violation and a neighbor complaint; responses to a city notice and an HOA violation; an injury incident report; and a personal use log.
Short-Term Rental Compliance Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist covers a short-term rental from the research that should precede a purchase through daily operation, complaints, and renewal. It sets out the five documents to read and five calls to make before listing, and why answering the city does not answer the HOA, the lender, or the insurer. It covers the permit conditions that get violated, the insurance conversation that prevents the largest exposure in the field, the tax registration that survives platform collection, and the hour-long safety walkthrough that becomes a premises liability defense. It ends with the operational disciplines—the local contact who actually answers, the neighbors who have your number, the occupancy limits enforced, and the long-stay threshold that can accidentally create a tenancy.
Running a Short-Term Rental Legally: A Practical Guide
This guide takes a short-term rental from the research a prospective host should do before buying or listing through the daily operation and the problems that end permits. It sets out the five documents to read and the five calls to make first, and why answering the city's question does not answer the HOA's, the lender's, or the insurer's. It covers the permit application and the conditions attached to it, the insurance conversation that prevents the single largest exposure in this field, and the tax registration that survives platform collection. It then covers operation: the safety inspection that is a defense, the house rules that are enforceable, the local contact requirement that revokes more permits than anything else, and the long-stay threshold that can accidentally create a tenancy. It closes on complaints, claims, and renewal.
Short-Term Rentals: Local Regulation, HOA Restrictions, Taxes, and Liability
Short-term rentals sit at the intersection of four bodies of law that were not written with them in mind, and the operator who understands only one of them is exposed on the other three. This article explains the local regulatory layer—permits, primary residence requirements, density caps, occupancy limits, and the enforcement mechanisms cities actually use—and then the private restrictions that frequently matter more, including HOA covenants, lease prohibitions, mortgage occupancy clauses, and the homeowner's policy exclusion that leaves many hosts effectively uninsured. It covers the tax layer, from transient occupancy taxes collected at the local level to the federal treatment of rental income including the fourteen-day rule and the passive activity limits. It closes with liability: guest injuries, neighbor nuisance claims, fair housing obligations, and the platform immunity that determines who a wronged guest or neighbor can actually sue.
Handling a Pet Legal Problem: A Practical Guide
This guide walks through the pet legal problems people actually have, in the order the work happens. It starts with the first forty-eight hours after a bite—for both the owner and the injured person—including the insurance notice that must not be late. It then covers the dangerous dog hearing as a case to be prepared and, better, negotiated before it happens. It covers housing disputes and the difference between a pet and an assistance animal, veterinary problems and the records and second opinion that decide them, buying disputes and the short lemon law windows, boarding and daycare injuries, and the animal seizure bond deadline that forfeits animals more often than any trial does.
Animal Law: Pet Ownership, Dangerous Dog Proceedings, and Veterinary Claims
Animal law sits on an uncomfortable premise: the law classifies animals as property, while most owners experience them as family, and nearly every dispute in this area turns on that gap. This article explains dog bite liability in both its strict liability and negligence forms, and what a dangerous dog proceeding actually is—an administrative hearing with real due process rights and a possible destruction order, which owners routinely walk into without counsel. It covers landlord pet policies and how assistance animals differ from pets, homeowners insurance exclusions that leave owners personally exposed, veterinary malpractice and the damages problem that makes those cases hard, and what happens to animals in a divorce, an estate, and a cruelty seizure.
Animal Law Toolkit: Incident Records, Hearing Defense, and Veterinary Claims
Working templates for animal legal problems. It includes a bite incident report and witness statement format, the prompt insurance notice that preserves coverage, and an ordinance review worksheet that extracts the two deadlines that decide a dangerous dog case. It provides a records request, a hearing presentation outline, a temperament evaluation request that tells the behaviorist what the hearing needs, a remediation package index, and a negotiation script for the conversation before the hearing. It also includes a housing accommodation request with provider documentation language, veterinary records and second opinion requests, a licensing board complaint, a footage preservation demand, a lemon law notice, and a pet trust and emergency caregiver plan.
Animal Law Checklist
A working checklist for animal legal problems, organized by the situation you are actually in. It opens with the first forty-eight hours after a bite for both the owner and the injured person, including the insurance notice that must not be late. It covers the dangerous dog hearing as a case to prepare and negotiate before it happens, housing disputes and the accommodation request most people never submit in writing, veterinary problems and the necropsy decision measured in hours, purchase disputes with their short statutory windows, boarding injuries and the footage preservation demand, and the seizure bond deadline that forfeits animals. It closes with the planning that makes all of it easier.
Buying and Selling a Home in a Homeowners Association
Buying a home in a common interest community means buying a share of a small government along with the house, and the diligence that matters is documentary rather than physical. The association's financial condition, its reserve funding, its pending litigation, and any looming special assessment all transfer to the buyer, and none of them appears in a home inspection. Most states require the seller or the association to deliver a resale package within a defined period and give the buyer a right to cancel after reviewing it, which makes the contingency period the single point at which problems can still be avoided. This guide covers what to request and how to read it, the lender eligibility rules that can make a unit unfinanceable regardless of the buyer's credit, the closing mechanics including estoppel and transfer fees, and the seller's disclosure obligations.