All Forum Posts by: Ryan Seib

Tell the LL you will have to bankrupt if they do not work with you. No commercial LL wants their tenants to fail though. So you should be able to work something out if LL can still make its mortgage payments. Best wishes in this seemingly difficult scenario and take care!

Agreed with Wayne Brooks. Just wait until the timelines run out and he will lose his lien rights. Chances are he will not actually comply with the lien rights statutes. And he has to do everything right to get the lien put on there. If he does succeed in putting a lien in place you have some options to remove it. If he is not entitled to any money you might even be able to sue him for slander of title. Best wishes!

Have you read a Random Walk Down Wall Street? Great book. Also fascinating is the whole Chicago school of economics take on the EMH. I personally favor the Austrian approach.

The only way to know where your property line is, is to map it out. To start, get the deed from your county register of deeds. Then look at the legal description of the property. If it is metes and bounds (ie feet and inch measurements along with direction vectors), then you would measure it yourself either in person with a measuring tape, more sophisticated equipment like lasers, or just draw out the measurements approximately on paper or a computer and see approximately where things stand. If the description is just a lot reference, you need to get the plat from the register of deeds and look up your lot on the plat. This is all stuff the surveyor is going to do. The only extra thing a boundary surveyor does is use his laser distance finding equipment or whatever to actually go out and stake the corners.

To your other question, can the attorney use some fancy legal shenanigans to steal your land? The short answer is no. But it is a qualified no. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, there are adverse possession laws that come into effect after a certain period of time (varies by state). Usually those laws refer to between 20-30 years of possession by the potential adverse possessor. And to win and move the boundary, the adverse possessor has to be occupying the space up to the boundary that entire time. Ie say he built a building over the real line, or poured a driveway there or something. Otherwise, no. Unless, there is something wrong with how the legal description of the deed was written. If the legal description of the deed is wrong, or the person who sold it to your mom did not have the right to sell the whole parcel of land, then that is another possible issue.

So yes I think you might need to talk to your lawyer, probably before you have the surveyor go out. Usually lawyers know how to read plat maps. Some lawyers can read metes and bounds and give you an idea what you are looking at regarding a potential boundary dispute.

Best wishes on this! Feel free to pm me this is something I deal with a lot. Happy to answer questions.

 Hi Lawrence I am just curious in your experience how often or do you see contamination standards changing? I used to do work with the Sierra Club. The whole goal of its measures what to continue to increase standards. So while I understand many cleanups would be grandfathered to a point, I wonder how commonly you see a property owner doing a second wave of remediation on or at the next sale.

Thanks for your insights!

If you are looking towards redevelopment ever, you need to factor in not only costs to make the property useable in the meantime, but potential costs that would be imposed during a redevelopment process. That is the decision point at which regulators have the most traction. They tend to want the entire site cleaned up before putting a new footprint in place.

Also this is common for any place that had old underground tanks. Those tanks were not made to last forever. For many parcels when the use changes hands they do not see the value in digging up unused old tanks. The tanks deteriorate and leak into the environment. Ground water takes the contaminants into neighboring properties. The prognosis is not good for a lot of old auto facilities that may need to just bulldoze or convey title to the municipality at the end of useful life.

Also consider that many remedies suggested by engineers and regulators are bandaids. The only way to fully remediate sometimes is to remove and replace all the soil. But that is impracticable. Even then, the groundwater still can bring contaminates into the new ground. What the regulators attempt to do is lower the contaminates below the current tolerances. But that does not mean there is not still contamination there. And in the future the tolerances can be lowered again. This could necessitate another cleanup.

Just be wary and careful what route you take. There is also very great upside here for investors. Most investors, including almost all corporate investors, will steer far clear of such places. That leaves a big opportunity to scoop up a parcel for a low price without facing great competition. I hope things work out like that for you!

You can. The arrangements can be complex though. Be careful!

Ask a couple of environmental firms what it would take to clear it up sufficient to satisfy the title company and/or EPA (or state equivalent). Who is the problem? Are you just worried about getting title insurance over the issue? Not that big a deal if the state has already cleared it. Most title companies do not cover environmental no matter what you do. So if that is the only problem I might let it be if I were you. Of course I would evaluate a situation like that case by case. Best wishes!

You can also clarify that with the sponsor and have them point out to you how the documents address your confusion. Or perhaps they need to clarify the language. If it is confusing now, it would certainly be confusing in court later!

Can you back out of administering the estate? If there is no money nothing should compel you (legally) to do it. I agree it can be very confusing. That is why there has to be money there to pay someone to figure it out, unfortunately. If you can withdraw or something just let the lien holders take over as the adminstrator. They will not want to of course. They would want you to do the work for free. But you do not need their permission. Did you already tie your SSN to the estate's EIN as a fiduciary? Best wishes with this!!