Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Presentation of Professionals and Liability Issues

The professionals we discussed last time each present specific legal issues that must be addressed in order to limit your liability. Engineers, surveyors, contractors, architects, real estate agents, and appraisers all have to be licensed by the state to perform their profession. Ensuring that these people are properly licensed by the governing authority is the first key step in protecting your assets. Failure to check these facts can lead to liability for the developer such as negligent hiring.

Also, each professional has nuanced requirements of timing and responsibilities for duties and costs that must be addressed in their respective contracts. For instance, we definitely want indemnity clauses in contracts with engineers and contractors to ensure that we are not held vicariously liable for their actions.

Monday, September 28, 2009

Professionals

Today we discussed the types of professionals a developer deals with when preparing a new development. The professions are various and include surveyors, title abstracters, real estate agents, appraisers, lenders, insurance agents, general contractors, subcontractors, engineers such as civil and structural, architects both structural and landscape, and more.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Fixed Documents

We have fixed both the contract and letter of intent to better suit your needs. We adjusted the format for both and ensured that the key term, due diligence, was properly scheduled. 60 days for due diligence and 90 days to closing is a much more workable schedule for you than 90 and 90 respectively.

Monday, September 21, 2009

The Letter and Contract

We presented our letter and contract to you today. You were overall pleased with the results, but we most certainly need to make some changes. We need to ensure that we have enough time between due diligence and closing to be practicable. 60 days for diligence and 90 days for closing is a better ratio than 90/90 respectively. We are also going to make the contract more readable with a block format.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Purchases

We discussed the ins and outs of purchase agreements today in preparation for our offer to Colonial Investments next week. Over the weekend we are going to draft a letter of intent and contract for sale. We will present our findings to you on Monday.

Thanks!

Monday, September 14, 2009

Environmental Presentation

Today we presented to you our findings from our environmental research into your desired property. We decided that we need to have an environmental assessment performed on the property. If contamination is found, we need to seek possible insurance and indemnity options, as well as remedial guidelines from ADEM.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Biscuits Stadium

Today we met at Montgomery Riverwalk Stadium to discuss environmental issues with Mr. Ken Groves. Mr. Groves works for the planning commission and headed the development of the stadium. His team encountered an underground plum of PCE, a toxic chemical. Even though the city was not responsible for its release, it now wished to develop a site over the plume and thus had to spend more money and work closely with ADEM to mitigate any spread or release of the toxin in to the water table. Mr. Groves made it very clear that working with the EPA and ADEM reaped greater results than trying to avoid the issue.

We now know that if any environmental issues are found we need to contact these two agencies. We may have to conduct lengthy tests and costly cleanup procedures. If this issues present themselves, we will need to make the determination of whether it is worth purchasing the property at all.

We will conduct further research into these issues over the weekend and present our findings to you next week.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Environmental Research

Today our firm discussed how environmental issues could affect our plans. Environmental liability is a possibility we cannot ignore as it could pose huge losses. We are going to research what issues may arise over the coming weekend. Specifically, we are going to research the Montgomery Riverwalk Stadium where the Biscuits play baseball. That site presented serious environmental problems for the local government when the site was developed, and it may provide some insight to our property.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Our First Presentation

Monday we met for our first presentation to you. We informed you, among other things, that there are encumbrance issues that need to be addressed.

Specifically, Huntingdon College still has an open deed of trust on our property. We need to contact Colonial Investments to get this resolved immediately. Also of concern are the restrictions listed in the Cloverdale Ridge plat. The plat is old, and many of these restrictions may no longer apply. However, we still need to ask around to see if these restrictions are still enforced because they could affect our development choices.