Monthly Archives: October 2015

As exciting as it can be to find what you think is the home of your dreams after a long and heretofore fruitless search, it’s important to understand that there are still a host of important tasks that must be completed before you call the moving company.

For years, Philadelphia’s neighbor across the river, Camden, has suffered from unprecedented levels of urban blight, poverty and, of course, crime. Indeed, the city was named the most violent in the U.S. in the not-so-distant past.

We are finishing up our discussion of a case from outside of Pennsylvania over damage caused by Chinese drywall. In our Oct. 19 post we talked about the extent of the drywall issue and how hard it was for affected homeowners to secure compensation for their losses. The case we have been talking about is not about a civil action against the drywall manufacturer, but a couple’s attempt to convince their property insurance company that the loss they suffered — the use and enjoyment of their new home — was covered by their homeowners policy.

We’re talking about an appellate decision in Florida that shows just how tough it can be to fight insurance companies over construction defects and faulty building materials. The construction material in this case is Chinese drywall that turned out, as we explained in our last post, to contain high levels of toxic substances. Thousands of homeowners, most of them on the East Coast, suffered health problems or discovered damaged wiring caused by sulfur fumes.

Pennsylvania may not have felt the truly disastrous effects of the Chinese drywall debacle as badly as other states. Our state had reported just more than a dozen incidents as of March 2014, while more than 2,000 Florida property owners had reported issues with the product by then. Still, we noted an appellate decision — in Florida — that illustrates a point about insurance and construction material defects that could easily hold true in any zip code.

Land use policy is — or should be — geared toward achieving the property’s highest and best use. The problem is that policymakers may disagree on what exactly the highest and best use is. Take Philly’s waterfront: At one time, factories and an enormous shipyard provided the most value to the landowners and the community. Over time, our understanding of value came to include the environmental toll and the noneconomic benefits of open spaces in a big city.

We have written about property rights (the “bundle of sticks”) in the past, and we have written about railroads and property rights. When railroad tracks or public roads lie adjacent to private land, there is always the potential for a property rights dispute, and those disputes boil down to one key issue: While railroads are a critical part of the country’s infrastructure, the owners of property near a railroad have the right to demand assurances that they and their property will be safe.

We are wrapping up our discussion about terminating easements. Generally, an easement will terminate when it is no longer needed or at a time agreed on by the dominant and servient property owners. (Remember, the servient property owner grants permission to use the land to the dominant property owner.) Because an easement is limited to the purpose agreed on, the dominant party cannot convert the easement into something else and cannot continue to use the easement after the purpose no longer exists.

Clear title is essential to owning real estate, whether you’re buying a home, purchasing a warehouse or investing in an oilfield. Although it doesn’t always seem obvious, a central question in any real estate transaction is always whether the seller actually has secure title to pass to the buyer. In most cases, there is little reason to doubt the buyer’s full rights to the property, so many people go through the purchase and sale process without really thinking about title — but you shouldn’t get the false impression that the issue isn’t important.

We are picking up the discussion about easements from our Sept. 21 post. An easement is one person’s protected right to use another person’s real property. There are a number of different ways to establish an easement, and there are a number of different types of easement. When we left off, we were talking about an easement created by grant: Property owners along a stretch of road granted the city the right to build a bike path that partially encroached on each property.