Before the first board is nailed in the home you are building, you need to be sure you have built in some protection for yourself by executing a construction contract. It is likely that your contractor has already furnished you with a contract ready for you to sign, but don’t do it without understanding everything in it and running it by your attorney first. Read More
Under Arizona law, tenancy at sufferance is the period of time after a lease has expired during which a tenant does not have tenancy because the landlord has not given permission for the tenant to possess the property. However, Arizona law does not consider the tenant to be trespassing because the landlord agreed at one time to rent to them. Read More
Every real estate transaction comes with potential pitfalls that can pose a real risk to your investment, whether you are buying or selling a home, or developing a piece of property.. Receiving experienced advice from a certified real estate specialist can help you manage that risk, no matter which side of the deal you are on. Read More
When a borrower defaults on a promissory note, Arizona lenders face the question of whether it would be more beneficial to foreclose on the property, accept a deed in lieu of foreclosure, or pursue a deficiency judgment. When making a choice, a lender must determine if there is sufficient collateral to cover the debt. If there is not, a lender will need to determine whether the debt is collectible, either through a deficiency judgment or suing on the note. Read More
If a lender sells a home in a foreclosure sale for less than what the borrower owed, there is a deficiency. And in Arizona, lenders can sometimes come after borrowers for that deficiency. Fortunately, in many cases, Arizona’s anti-deficiency law prohibits a lender from obtaining a deficiency judgment — or, in cases when a judgment is allowed, state law limits the amount of the judgment. Read More
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed a great deal about how Arizonans—and Americans in general—vacation in 2020, and there’s little indication yet that 2021 will be much better. From restrictions in travel—no going abroad!—to limitations on nonessential businesses, to the occasional full two week quarantine, to fears of what air travel might mean for the health of those who use it, everything has been up in the air. Naturally, this has had some effect on those who own short-term rentals. Particularly the “little guys.” Read More
Sometimes a new landlord in Arizona finds that an evicted tenant has left behind some personal property in the now-empty rental space they recently occupied. It’s not uncommon for the old refrain “finders keepers, losers weepers” to run through the landlord’s mind upon making this discovery. And yet, while there is some level of truth in property law to that nursery-rhyme concept, things are not quite so simple in the landlord-tenant branch of the law. Read More
The real estate puzzles posed by the COVID-19 pandemic are legion. In normal times, Arizona’s real estate regime has not made much room for what is referred to as “rent striking.” In other words, the reasons a tenant might have been tacitly authorized by law to withhold rent have been few indeed. But in the immediate wake of the pandemic’s rise much of the relief created by lawmakers—mainly on the federal level, which supersedes Arizona law—has come out in the balance favoring tenants. Read More
We have yet to see the full scope of fallout from the economic side-effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, but a great number of outlets are predicting that mortgage delinquency is likely to increase dramatically. That’s bad news for lenders on a number of levels. In the meantime, lenders are facing the up-front cost of dealing with laws designed to help borrowers to temporarily avoid paying their mortgages in the face of the crisis. Read More
Easements run like shattered cobwebs across the state of Arizona. These property rights provide one person a right to use another person’s property for certain limited uses—and this limited use is considered a form of real estate interest that the property owner cannot simply revoke at will under law. Read More
