Philadelphia Metropolitan Area Real Estate Law Blog

When purchasing property through a limited liability ompany, many real estate investors in Pennsylvania and throughout the country enjoy a number of benefits. However, it may be more difficult to take advantage of them when it comes to residential real estate investments. However, real estate investors can still enjoy the benefits of using an LLC when the transaction is properly structured.

Although it may be difficult for some Pennsylvania residents to keep track of the names of different generations, there is a far-reaching influence felt as young people impact various facets of life. Real estate is starting to experience the effect as millennials mature. Nearly half of all home purchases throughout the nation are first-time instances. Nearly two-thirds of those selling a home have never done so before.

The residential real estate market in Pennsylvania is most active during the spring and summer months, but there are a number of reasons why those looking for a new home might be wise to wait until the fall to begin their searches. The real estate information company RealtyTrac studied 15 years’ worth of data and more than 30 million American home sales, and they found that houses sold for prices about 2.6 percent lower than their estimated market values when transactions closed during October.

Pennsylvania real estate investors might be interested in learning about a trend for those who live in high-priced markets along the East and West Coasts. Investors are increasingly purchasing properties in areas with low home prices but competitive rents in other states using firms.

Prospective landlords and tenants are both well-served to familiarize themselves with Pennsylvania’s basic statutes concerning the proper handling of security deposits. When it comes to lease conflicts, most of them come back in some way or another to disputes about a security deposit (or lack of one). While the statutes offer a great deal of flexibility to creators of leases regarding how security deposits must be handled, there are some clearly defined guidelines that will help both tenants and landlords stay within the reasonable boundaries of good practices.

Pennsylvania recently joined a host of other states in legalizing the use of marijuana for medical purposes, and businesses are chomping at the bit to be some of the first to participate in the new industry. Although the law was signed on April 17, Governor Tom Wolf says that even those residents who qualify to receive medical marijuana products will not be able to do so until those products are produced within Pennsylvania. The new business sector means many new businesses will be vying for permits to grow the crop, not to mention the ancillary businesses which may have to acquire special licensing for extracting, processing and packaging medical marijuana products.

An easement is a property right that may affect you whether or not you own real property in Pennsylvania. Briefly, an easement is an agreement that allows one party to use, for a particular purpose, the real property of another. While many easements are simple in principle or effect, the agreements creating and enforcing easements should be carefully crafted because they alter real property ownership rights.

There are some instances when individuals may need to gain the right to enter someone else’s property. In legal terms, easement is the right by one party to enter and access another person’s property for a specific purpose. Because of such an easement, depending on the circumstances, a person may be able to use property not belonging to them, or someone else may come upon someone’s property and they would have no legal recourse to remove them. Across Pennsylvania, and elsewhere in the country, many people are forcing conservation and other easement rights that may adversely affect property owners.

It is not enough just to purchase a piece of property and begin development. Many commercial real estate ventures require the approval of the city, county and/or municipality in which the project is taking place. For example, a company is set to purchase an old Kraft Heinz plant here in Pennsylvania and is more than likely facing an uphill battle to receive the needed approvals to demolish the plant and build warehouses.

Real estate investors in Pennsylvania may be interested to learn about some of the latest reports from Ten-X. The online real estate buying and selling platform regularly issues a report called the Residential Real Estate Nowcast. According to the June report, homes sales numbers are continuing their upward trend, but the pace is slowing down.