DOSSIER · PROP

Closing on Real Property

Title and survey protection, boundary and easement conflict, construction change control, and commercial diligence before closing.

Brief stack

In this dossier

Full PROP desk →

PROP-01 · 01

Title Insurance and Surveys: What Each Protects in a Real Estate Purchase

8 MIN · PROP

A title policy insures the record; a survey establishes the ground. This brief maps what each one covers, which standard exceptions a survey can remove, and where both leave the buyer exposed.

A title policy is an indemnity contract covering defects that existed on the policy date — it does not insure against future events or physical conditions.
The lender's policy protects the lender's lien for the loan balance only; a buyer who wants protection must buy a separate owner's policy.
ALTA forms carry standard exceptions for survey matters, parties in possession, unrecorded easements, unrecorded mechanics' liens, and taxes not yet shown of record.

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PROP-02 · 02

Easements and Boundary Disputes: Documents, Use, and Available Remedies

8 MIN · PROP

Neighbor disputes over crossings, fences, and driveways are decided by how the right arose. This brief sorts the origins first, then matches each one to the remedy that actually fits.

An easement is a nonpossessory right to use someone else's land; it can arise by grant, reservation, implication, necessity, prescription, estoppel, or dedication.
A prescriptive easement gives use rights only; adverse possession transfers ownership and generally requires exclusive possession that prescription does not.
Statutory periods, tax-payment requirements, and boundary doctrines such as acquiescence and agreed boundary differ substantially from state to state.

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PROP-03 · 03

Construction Change Orders: Scope, Price, Schedule, and Documentation

9 MIN · PROP

Most construction payment fights are not about whether the work was done. They are about whether the paperwork that authorized it exists. This brief maps the sequence that decides those claims.

Work changes three ways: a signed change order, a unilateral directive the contractor must follow while price is unresolved, and conduct that changes the work without paper.
A constructive change is extra or different work compelled by owner conduct rather than a formal order; it is provable, but only with contemporaneous documentation.
Standard general conditions, including the AIA A201 family, impose short written-notice periods for claims — commonly measured in days from the triggering event.

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PROP-04 · 04

Commercial Real Estate Due Diligence Before Closing

8 MIN · PROP

A diligence period is short and the findings that end deals are not evenly distributed. This brief sequences the work so the discoveries that kill a transaction surface first.

Order diligence by kill risk: environmental, title and access, zoning and entitlement, then lease and income verification, then condition and cost items.
A Phase I environmental site assessment performed to ASTM E1527-21 is the route to satisfying EPA's All Appropriate Inquiries rule and the CERCLA landowner liability protections.
Those protections require continuing obligations after closing, and they do not reach every contaminant, every statute, or common-law claims by neighbors.

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PROP-07 · 05

Purchase Options and Rights of First Refusal in Real Property

8 MIN · PROP

An option is fired at the holder's choosing. A right of first refusal only wakes up when someone else makes an offer. Confusing the two produces most of the litigation in this area.

An option is exercisable whenever the holder elects during its term; a right of first refusal stays dormant until a third-party offer the owner will accept appears.
Options generally need a stated term, a price or a price mechanism, and consideration; without those, courts treat them as revocable offers or as unenforceably indefinite.
Rights of first refusal live or die on the transfer definition: affiliate transfers, foreclosure, condemnation, gifts and portfolio sales are commonly carved out.

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PROP-09 · 06

Operating Expense Reconciliation: Auditing a Commercial Landlord's Charges

8 MIN · PROP

A reconciliation statement is an arithmetic conclusion drawn from a lease. This brief works backwards from the invoice to the clauses that produced it, and to the audit clock that closes the argument.

Operating expense disputes are lease-interpretation disputes: the inclusion list, the exclusion list, the pro rata share definition, and the cap language decide the answer.
Gross-up provisions adjust variable expenses to an assumed occupancy level; applied to a comparison year but not the base year, they inflate the pass-through.
Caps only bite if the lease says they are cumulative and compounding, and most caps exclude taxes, insurance and utilities as non-controllable expenses.

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