TAG

Title & boundaries

Title insurance, surveys, easements, and boundary conflict.

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-04 · 03

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-05 · 04

Environmental Liability in Property Transfers: CERCLA and the Defences

9 MIN · PROP

Buying contaminated land can make the buyer liable for cleanup it did nothing to cause. This brief sets out how that happens, which federal defences exist, and what each one costs to keep.

CERCLA liability is strict, joint and several, and retroactive: a current owner can be held responsible for contamination caused entirely by someone else, decades earlier.
The bona fide prospective purchaser, innocent landowner, and contiguous property owner defences all require All Appropriate Inquiries completed before acquisition — never afterwards.
Each defence carries continuing obligations after closing. Ignoring land-use restrictions or refusing site access can forfeit a status that was validly earned at purchase.

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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-10 · 06

Development Agreements, Exactions, and Impact Fees

9 MIN · PROP

Approval conditions are where most of a project's cost is set. This brief separates what a local government may lawfully require from what a developer agrees to buy peace.

Approval conditions fall into three families — dedications of land, required off-site improvements, and money — and each is tested slightly differently.
A condition must have an essential nexus to a legitimate government interest and be roughly proportional to the project's actual impact, on an individualised assessment.
The Supreme Court held in 2024 that this scrutiny is not avoided merely because a fee is imposed by legislation rather than by an official's discretion.

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