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.
Water Rights Toolkit: Applications, Transfers, Adjudications, and Enforcement
This toolkit assembles the working documents of a water rights matter: a water right abstract and due diligence request, purchase agreement and deed language, a new appropriation application outline with proof of beneficial use, an annual use log and forfeiture defense memorandum, a change application outline with an engineer engagement scope, a protest letter, a curtailment response and futile call demand, a dry-year lease term sheet, an augmentation plan outline, adjudication statement of claim and objection outlines, a district records request, and a pre-application meeting agenda for physical permitting.
Water Right and Permitting Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist covers water rights from purchase diligence through adjudication. It runs the five threshold questions that identify which system you are in, the diligence sequence for buying land with water, the application and perfection steps for a new appropriation, the annual documentation habit that defeats forfeiture, the transfer sequence built around historical consumptive use, the protest and curtailment responses with their short deadlines, the general adjudication steps including the statement of claim deadline that can extinguish a right, and the separate physical permitting required for work in a waterway.
Securing and Defending a Water Right: A Practical Guide
This guide is the operating sequence for anyone who owns, is buying, or wants to create a water right. It covers the due diligence that prevents the most common and most expensive mistake in rural real estate, how to apply for and perfect a new appropriation, the annual documentation habit that defeats forfeiture, how to run a change or transfer application including the historical consumptive use analysis that decides it, what to do when a curtailment order arrives, how to file a statement of claim in a general adjudication, and how to handle a district or ditch company relationship that may matter more than the underlying right.
Water Rights: Prior Appropriation, Riparian Doctrine, Groundwater, and Federal Reserved Rights
Water law is two systems, a set of federal overlays, and a growing crisis, and which system applies depends on which side of roughly the hundredth meridian you are standing on. This article explains riparian rights and the reasonable use standard in the East, prior appropriation and the priority system in the West, how a right is created, maintained, lost, and transferred under each, the separate and often incoherent treatment of groundwater, federal reserved rights under the Winters doctrine and the Indian water rights settlements that implement them, interstate allocation by compact and equitable apportionment, general stream adjudications, and where Clean Water Act permitting intersects with all of it.
Art Law Toolkit: Consignment Agreements, Provenance Research, and Claims
This toolkit assembles the working documents of an art matter: a provenance worksheet and database search log, bill of sale warranty language, a condition report template, a pre-auction question letter, consignment agreement terms with a gallery insolvency demand, commission agreement and moral rights clauses, the statutory artist notification letter for building-incorporated work, loan agreement terms and an insurance schedule, demand letters for stolen art and responses to a restitution claim, a forgery rescission demand, an estate art inventory, and dealer conflict disclosure language.
Mineral Title and Oil and Gas Lease Review Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist runs mineral title work and lease review in the order the transaction requires. It begins with establishing what is actually owned, including the severance history, the fractional interest expressed in net mineral acres, which of the five mineral sticks are held, and whether a dormant mineral statute applies. It then works the lease clause by clause with the negotiation position on each, the surface use agreement negotiated separately, the division order verification that determines every payment thereafter, and the post signing monitoring that catches a lease held past its term. A final section covers curative work on defective title.
Art Transaction and Provenance Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist runs an art matter from diligence through claim. It covers the provenance research sequence and the gaps that require resolution rather than explanation, the warranties a bill of sale must contain, what to read in auction conditions of sale before bidding, the consignment terms that determine whether an artist recovers work from a failed gallery, the moral rights sequence a building owner must follow before renovation, insurance and shipping practices, loan agreement terms, and the response sequences for a stolen art claim, a forgery, and an estate.
Buying, Selling, and Protecting Art: A Practical Guide
This guide is the working sequence for anyone buying, selling, commissioning, lending, or inheriting art. It covers the diligence a buyer must actually do and document, how to read auction terms of sale and what the limited authenticity warranty really provides, the consignment agreement that determines whether an artist recovers work from a failed gallery, the moral rights questions a building owner and a commissioning client must address before installation rather than after, insurance and shipping practices that prevent most real-world losses, what to do when a work turns out to be stolen or fake, and how to plan a collection into an estate.
Art Law and Cultural Property: Title, Provenance, Moral Rights, and Repatriation
Art law is a collision of ordinary commercial law with objects that are unique, portable, easily faked, frequently stolen, and sometimes sacred. This article explains why a thief cannot pass title and what that means for a museum holding a work for eighty years, how limitations and laches actually resolve stolen art claims, the special regime for Nazi-era looted art and the sovereign immunity exception that reaches foreign museums, the moral rights of attribution and integrity that survive the sale of a work and constrain the owner of a building, authentication and forgery disputes and why experts stopped opining, consignment and auction practice, and the criminal and repatriation regimes governing cultural property and Native American remains.
Easements, Boundary Disputes, and Adverse Possession
Land disputes between neighbors follow a small number of recurring patterns, and almost all of them are decided by doctrines that were fully formed before the Civil War. Someone uses a driveway across a neighbor's land for thirty years; a fence sits eight feet inside the recorded line; a landlocked parcel has no legal access; a garage overhangs the boundary by fourteen inches. This article works through the law that resolves each: the several ways an easement can arise and the very different proof each requires, how scope and relocation disputes are analyzed, the elements of adverse possession and the boundary doctrines that reach the same result more easily, and the remedies available for an encroachment. It closes with the diligence practices that prevent these disputes and the litigation choices that resolve them.
Homeowners Associations and Condominium Law: Governance, Assessments, and Enforcement
A common interest community is a small private government with the power to tax, legislate, adjudicate, and foreclose, operated by volunteers who have usually received no training. The governing documents form a contract that runs with the land and binds every purchaser, but that contract sits beneath a growing overlay of state statutes, fair housing law, and judicial doctrines limiting what a board may enforce and how. The disputes that consume associations are predictable: unpaid assessments, architectural denials, underfunded reserves, selective enforcement, and the aftermath of developer control. This article covers the structure of the documents, the board's duties and the deference it receives, assessment and lien practice, enforcement mechanics, and the transition and construction defect issues that arise when the declarant leaves.
Mortgage Default and Loss Mitigation Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist runs a mortgage default from the first missed payment to resolution, in the order the clock requires. It begins with the four facts that determine every later decision, then works the free administrative tools that produce the loan file and create a written record, the loss mitigation application that must be complete to trigger federal anti-dual-tracking protection, the fee and escrow audit that frequently reduces the arrears, and the defense review that identifies whether a real procedural defect exists. It includes separate tracks for judicial and nonjudicial states, a document inventory, and an exit checklist for homeowners who cannot keep the property.