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.
Negotiating an Oil and Gas Lease: A Practical Guide for Landowners
This guide is written for the landowner across the table from a landman. It explains what to establish before responding to any offer, how to value what you own, and then works through every clause worth negotiating in order of economic significance: the royalty fraction and the deduction language that can matter more than the fraction, the primary term, the Pugh and depth clauses that prevent a single well from holding everything forever, shut in and savings clauses, pooling limits, and warranty. It then covers the separate surface use agreement, what to do when the first check arrives, and how to verify the decimal interest that determines every payment thereafter.
1031 Like-Kind Exchange Checklist: A Practical Checklist
A like-kind exchange is a deadline exercise with one absolute prerequisite: the qualified intermediary must be engaged and the assignment in place before the relinquished property closes, because once the taxpayer has the right to receive the proceeds no subsequent structure can fix it. This checklist runs the transaction chronologically from listing through the tax return, calls out the two statutory deadlines that cannot be extended, and flags the traps that end otherwise sound exchanges: a December closing without a return extension, a single identified property that falls out of contract, unreplaced debt producing boot in a completed exchange, and an intermediary who is a disqualified person because they are the taxpayer's own accountant. It closes with the reporting the exchange ultimately lives or dies on, and with the reverse and improvement structures worth considering when the replacement property has to come first. The identification rules get their own phase, since that is where most failed exchanges fail.
Title Insurance and Curing Title Defects: A Practical Guide
Title insurance is the only major insurance product that pays for losses arising from events that already happened, and understanding it means understanding that the premium buys two things: a search that finds problems before closing, and an indemnity for the problems the search missed. Most of the value is in the first. This guide covers how a title search and commitment are assembled and how to read the three schedules, what the standard exceptions actually exclude and how each is removed, the endorsements that matter in a commercial transaction, and the curative work that resolves the defects a search turns up—from a misspelled name to an open mortgage from 1974 to a break in the chain requiring a quiet title action. It closes with how claims are made and what the policy actually pays.
Commercial Lease Review Checklist: A Practical Checklist
A commercial lease is usually the second largest financial commitment a small business makes, and it is drafted by the landlord. This checklist covers the review in the order the money moves. It begins with the letter of intent, where the leverage actually exists, then rentable area and the load factor that determines what a stated rate really costs. It works through operating expense pass-throughs and the four provisions that control them, the tenant improvement allowance and delivery mechanics, and the use and exclusivity clauses that decide whether the space works for the business. Later phases cover the transfer provisions that matter if the company is ever sold, the personal guaranty and how to limit it, the lender documents that protect a tenant in a foreclosure, and the end-of-term obligations that produce most post-lease disputes.
Residential Landlord-Tenant Law: A Practical Guide for Small Landlords
Owning a rental property is a regulated business, and the regulations are local, unforgiving, and largely invisible until something goes wrong. This guide covers the residential landlord-tenant relationship from screening through possession. It starts with the fair housing rules that govern advertising and tenant selection, including the source-of-income and criminal-history restrictions that many landlords have never heard of, then the lease itself and the provisions that are void by statute in most states. It covers security deposits, where the penalties for a late or unitemized return frequently exceed the deposit itself, and the implied warranty of habitability and the tenant remedies that follow from a breach. Later sections address entry, retaliation, and the eviction process in detail, including the self-help prohibition that converts a rent dispute into a damages claim against the landlord.
Fair Housing and Lending Toolkit: Testing, Complaints, and Litigation
A working kit for fair housing practice on both sides. Section A is a protected class and coverage matrix mapping federal, common state, and common local protections against the transactions each reaches. Section B holds complainant instruments: an incident log, a tester report form, a HUD complaint narrative template, an accommodation request letter, and an appraisal reconsideration request. Section C holds provider instruments: model screening criteria, an advertising review guide, an accommodation response letter, an interactive process log, and an FCRA adverse action notice. Section D holds litigation instruments: a discovery request set, a disparate impact worksheet, a comparator chart, and a position statement outline. Section E collects the primary authorities.
Eminent Domain and Regulatory Takings: Just Compensation, Inverse Condemnation, and Penn Central
The Fifth Amendment permits the government to take private property for public use on payment of just compensation, and almost every word in that clause has generated its own body of law. Direct condemnation is a procedure—the government files, deposits an estimate, takes title, and litigates value. Regulatory takings are harder, because a regulation that destroys value is sometimes compensable and usually is not, and the line between them runs through a multi-factor test the Supreme Court has repeatedly declined to make more predictable. This article covers the public use requirement after Kelo, the categorical rules for physical occupations and total economic wipeouts, the Penn Central balancing test, the exaction cases, the mechanics of a condemnation action, and how just compensation is actually measured.
Buying Commercial Real Estate: Contract, Diligence, Title, and Closing
Buying a commercial building is a diligence exercise with a contract wrapped around it, and the contract exists mainly to define how long you have to discover problems and what happens when you do. This article walks the transaction in order. It covers the letter of intent and the purchase and sale agreement, the deposit structure and the difference between refundable and hard money, and the due diligence period that is the single most negotiated term. It then covers title review in detail, including how to read a commitment and its exceptions, what an ALTA survey shows that a title report does not, and the endorsements worth buying. Later sections address environmental assessment and the innocent landowner defense, zoning and land use verification, tenant estoppels and lender documents for leased property, financing, entity and tax structuring including 1031 exchanges, and the closing itself, with a worked example, a diligence checklist, and an FAQ.
Fair Housing Compliance and Complaint Checklist: A Practical Checklist
A two-sided checklist. The complainant sequence covers what to document in the first week, what not to do, choosing among the four enforcement paths and their differing deadlines, filing with HUD or a local agency, and building the damages record. The compliance sequence covers written screening criteria, individualized criminal and eviction assessment, advertising review, occupancy standards, the reasonable accommodation process, assistance animals, the seven design and construction requirements for post 1991 multifamily housing, algorithmic screening and pricing audits, training, and records retention. A response sequence covers the first forty eight hours after a complaint arrives.
Defending a Foreclosure: A Practical Guide for Homeowners
This guide is a step-by-step defense plan for a homeowner facing foreclosure, written to be used rather than admired. It starts with the four facts you must establish in the first week, then moves through the free administrative tools that produce the loan file and stop the clock, the loss mitigation application that must be complete to trigger federal protection, the audit of the reinstatement quote that removes improper fees, and the litigation options in judicial and nonjudicial states. It explains what a defense realistically accomplishes, which arguments courts reject and why pursuing them is dangerous, when bankruptcy is the right tool, and how to exit with dignity and money when keeping the house is not possible.
Bringing and Defending a Fair Housing Claim: A Practical Guide
This guide runs a fair housing matter from both sides. The complainant track covers recognizing what happened, the documentation to create in the first week, working with a fair housing organization and its testing program, choosing among the four enforcement paths and their different deadlines and remedies, filing with HUD without a lawyer, the investigation and conciliation process, when to elect federal court, and how to plead and prove a private action. The respondent track covers the first forty-eight hours after a complaint arrives, preserving records, drafting a position statement that does not create new problems, the defenses that actually work, when to conciliate, and how to build the compliance program that prevents the next one.
Fair Housing and Lending Discrimination: Disparate Treatment, Disparate Impact, and Enforcement
Housing discrimination is rarely announced. It happens through a returned call that never comes, a quoted rent that is higher for one caller than another, a neighborhood suggestion framed as helpfulness, an algorithm that scores an applicant, and an appraisal that reads the neighborhood rather than the house. This article explains what the Fair Housing Act prohibits and who it covers, how disparate treatment and disparate impact claims are actually proved, why tester standing exists, what reasonable accommodations and modifications require, the accessible design requirements that apply to newer multifamily housing, how lending discrimination is regulated under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and surfaced through HMDA data, and the four enforcement paths available to a person who has been discriminated against.