November 11, 2023
Compliance with zoning codes, building codes, and design guidelines is an evergreen topic for the real estate lawyer, and for this newsletter. A situation that illustrates how those types of rules are enforced recently came to my attention. It involves a house in California that is, to put it bluntly, gaudy. It looks like it’s […]
August 19, 2022
by Nathan B. Hannah When two or more people buy real estate together, they usually do it in such a way thatthere is a prearranged method for un-doing the ownership, at least in some circumstances.The most common example is when two people buy real estate as joint tenants with rightof survivorship. If one of the […]
November 3, 2020
With lots of people now working remotely, I can’t help wondering: is this going to have an impact on real estate? I was already noticing advertising for new houses touting the inclusion of home office space. Then I saw this headline: “Nearly 12 Million Square Feet of Vacant Office Space in S.F.” So yes, I […]
June 1, 2020
You probably already know that if you are going to buy or sell a house, a parcel of land, or a commercial property, it would be a good idea to utilize the services of a real estate professional who has experience in transactions involving the type of property you are going to buy or sell. […]
December 17, 2019
Home Title Lock is a service that I have heard advertised recently. The service purports to protect home owners against fraudulent title schemes. To oversimplify it, here’s an outline of the scheme that the purveyors of this service are talking about. First, suppose a thief records a forged deed, transferring title to your home to […]
November 16, 2018
An article that appeared recently in the Arizona Republic newspaper reminded me that it is time for an update on a subject that I wrote about a few months ago. The newspaper article was about a residential real estate brokerage operating on what has been loosely described as a “peer-to-peer” platform. If you don’t know […]
July 23, 2018
I’m reluctant to pick anything out of the news to write about these days because I find so much of what’s in the news to be neither entertaining nor enlightening. Maybe I’m just starting to get tired of summer already. Real estate prices seem to be on the rise again. I’m hopeful that the problems […]
May 18, 2017
On at least a couple of occasions in the past I have written about the Arizona statute that requires sellers of unsubdivided land in unincorporated areas to provide an affidavit of disclosure. A commenter recently pointed out an area of uncertainty that I believe I identified in some of my earlier writings on this subject. […]
March 29, 2016
I admit up front that I know almost nothing about the substantive law behind a lawsuit filed recently against the Air Force in federal court in Tucson. The lawsuit is founded on the claim that airport noise can detract from children’s mental development and education, and therefore the environmental review that was done in conjunction with a plan for more “visiting” aircraft […]
November 25, 2015
The Buyer Advisory provided by the Arizona Department of Real Estate and the Arizona Association of Realtors® has been updated as of September, 2015. It can be viewed and printed from the Association’s web site. The Buyer Advisory is a thirteen-page document full of information for a prospective buyer of any type of real estate, […]