Insights

Real Estate

Real estate insights on leasing, acquisitions, development agreements, and title dispute issues.

1031 Like-Kind Exchanges: How to Defer Capital Gains on a Commercial Property Sale

When you sell a commercial property at a gain, you owe federal capital gains tax (up to 20 percent for long-term gains), depreciation recapture tax (25 percent on the accumulated depreciation), net investment income tax (3.8 percent for high earners), and potentially state tax depending on where the property is located.

Commercial Lease Negotiation: Key Terms Every Tenant Should Negotiate Before Signing

A commercial lease is a negotiated agreement, and every term in it affects your total occupancy cost, your operational flexibility, and your exposure if something goes wrong with the landlord, the building, or your business.

Due Diligence in a Commercial Property Purchase: What to Review Before Your Deposit Goes Hard

Due diligence is the buyer's only window to investigate a commercial property before the transaction becomes irrevocable. During the feasibility period (typically 30 to 60 days after execution of the purchase and sale agreement), the buyer can terminate the contract for any reason and recover the earnest money deposit.

Easements and Restrictive Covenants: What Runs with the Land and How It Affects Your Property

An easement gives someone the right to use your land for a specific purpose without owning it. A restrictive covenant limits what you can do with your own land. Both run with the land, meaning they bind every subsequent owner regardless of whether that owner agreed to them.

Landlord Remedies When a Commercial Tenant Defaults: Eviction, Lockouts, and Rent Recovery in Texas

When a commercial tenant stops paying rent, the landlord's response determines how much of the lost rent can be recovered and how quickly the space can be returned to productive use. Texas provides commercial landlords a set of remedies that most other states don't, including the right to change the locks on a delinquent tenant's space without going to court first.

Structuring Ownership of Commercial Property: Why the Entity Holding Title Makes a Difference

Holding commercial real estate in your personal name or in a general-purpose operating company exposes every other asset you own to liabilities arising from the property. A slip-and-fall on the parking lot, a construction defect, an environmental claim, or a defaulted loan can reach your personal accounts, your other businesses, and your other properties if you haven't isolated the real estate in a separate entity.

The Letter of Intent in Commercial Real Estate: What It Binds and What It Doesn't

Most commercial real estate transactions start with a letter of intent, not a contract. A buyer submits an LOI to a seller outlining the proposed purchase price, earnest money, due diligence period, financing contingency, and closing timeline.

Title Insurance and Survey Review: What Commercial Buyers Need to Understand Before Closing

A title commitment and a survey are the two documents that tell you what you're buying. They show what the legal record contains, whatever the listing broker described or the seller represented, covering the property's ownership, encumbrances, boundaries, and physical condition.

Triple Net Leases: What NNN Means and How Operating Expenses Shift to the Tenant

A triple net lease shifts property taxes, building insurance, and common area maintenance costs from the landlord to the tenant. In a gross lease, the landlord absorbs those costs and builds them into a higher rent. In a triple net lease, the tenant pays a lower base rent but picks up the operating expenses on top of it, and those expenses are variable, reconciled annually, and can increase substantially over the lease term if the lease doesn't contain caps and exclusions.