In a judgment of 22 April 2021, the European Court of Justice found that a lease contract entered into between an Austrian authority and a real estate company before the construction of the building did not constitute a contractual building contract, as the authority had not had a decisive influence on the design. The authority's requirements thus did not exceed the requirements that a tenant usually places on a building of a similar nature ...
Ownership of mines and minerals separately to surface land poses a risk for developers that must be assessed and mitigated as appropriate. It is not uncommon for mines and minerals to be owned separately to the land at the surface and in certain areas of the country, particularly the north, it is frequently encountered ...
This blog post highlights certain amendments to British Columbia’s Real Estate Development Marketing Act (“REDMA”) Policy Statements 5 and 6 which came into effect May 1, 2021. Policy Statement 5 sets out circumstances under which a developer is deemed to have permission to begin early marketing of a real estate development before a building permit is issued for the development ...
The Oregon Senate will soon be deciding on a bill that would allow an owner of a lot or parcel at least two acres in size in an area zoned rural residential to build an accessory dwelling unit, or “ADU,” on that lot or parcel, provided there is already a single-family dwelling on the lot or parcel ...
It is a truism to say that infill development in Oregon is fraught and expensive. This is apparently not lost on the Legislature, which over the past four years has enacted a number of laws to reduce local permitting barriers on infill projects in an attempt to provide for more affordable and middle-income housing ...
The government has published its much-heralded Bill to outlaw the payment of ground rents under long residential leases. Background The payment of ground rents by residential tenants of long leases has become something of a cause celebre, particularly where leases include ground rents that double every five, ten or twenty years making those leases less valuable and potentially unsaleable ...
The Court of Appeal has unanimously held that a tenant’s statutory declarations given to landlords were valid even though they did not specify the precise term commencement date of the leases to be contracted out. Landlords will be relieved that the Court of Appeal did not adopt an overly legalistic and commercially impractical interpretation of the contracting-out requirements ...
Open banking is an emerging financial services model that focuses on the portability and open availability of customer data held by financial institutions. It involves opening up banking systems, particularly customer data, to third parties to allow them provide services directly to customers ...
For some years, contractors and subcontractors have been using an effective tactic in adjudication. That is to pick off discrete elements of a large time or money claim and to obtain a series of favourable declarations in adjudications on those elements. The declarations can then be used as a bargaining tool to leverage a settlement of the full claim. Or they can be converted into payment orders by way of a further adjudication ...
The government is consulting on a proposal to introduce a new UK-wide tax for residential property developers from 2022, with a view to generating revenue to cover the costs associated with the removal of unsafe cladding. The measure is intended to generate at least £2 billion over the course of a decade, which the government says is a “fair contribution” to the overall cost of the remediation programme ...
In a recent case, the Upper Tribunal decided that land benefitting from a restrictive covenant was greater than the land which had the legal benefit. An application to release the covenant was, accordingly, refused ...
The pandemic has, if nothing else, demonstrated how much more needs to be done in the battle against climate change. Despite the worldwide economic slowdown and travel ban resulting from coronavirus, global carbon dioxide emissions reduced by just 6% (approximately 2.3bn tonnes) in 2020. But both governments and industry are responding to the challenge, however, with a renewed sense of urgency and collaborative spirit ...
We all need our town centres. But more than that, we need our town centres to work better for us. As consumers grow increasingly comfortable with online shopping, the realisation that our towns are over-reliant on retail is being played out at a national level. No longer can we expect empty retail units to be snapped up by new tenants in a matter of weeks ...
The recent anti-suit injunction decision in Axis v Absa Group demonstrates the importance of considering the practical effect of jurisdiction clauses when a suite of contracts or (re)insurance policies are entered into ...
The COVID-19 Pandemic has wreaked havoc on the mortgage servicing industry, putting significant strain on both mortgage servicers and their borrowers ...
Key Points The California Court of Appeal has issued the first published opinion interpreting California Senate Bill 35's (SB 35) new laws that streamline the approval of much-needed housing projects. Under SB 35, qualifying housing projects are eligible for ministerial review, which can reduce entitlement processing times by months if not years. In Ruegg & Ellsworth v. City of Berkeley (Cal. Ct. App., April 20, 2021, No ...
If the COVID-19 pandemic affected the value of your property, Ohio Senate Bill 57 (S.B. 57) may offer you (or your triple-net lease tenant) a chance to reduce your Ohio real property taxes not available under prior law. Property tax valuation complaints in Ohio counties can be filed only once in each three-year interim period, and property values are determined as of January 1 of the tax year. Because the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S ...
Acting under its new Debt Collection Licensing Act licensing administration and enforcement authority granted by SB 908, the DFPI Commissioner issued a public statement on April 9th reminding all future license applicants under the Debt Collection Licensing Act of California’s renter protections associated with COVID-19 rental debt ...
Led by Anna Lowe, this short and sharp session covered recent updates in tax affecting real estate. 1. VAT and the Reverse Charge Applies from 1 March 2021 to supplies of building and construction services where the Construction Industry Scheme would apply ...
One consistent struggle faced by the mortgage servicing industry is the prevalence of conflicting state laws that address payoff statements. One state may permit a servicer to charge a fee for providing a payoff statement while another prohibits such a fee. One state may have specific content requirements that must be included in a payoff statement while another provides the servicer with discretion about the content of the payoff statement ...
The 95% home loan is back and this time it is government backed. The commitment by the Chancellor to propping up the housing market was cemented in the March 2021 budget by the announcement of an extension and tapering off of the Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) holiday and the new 95% mortgage guarantee scheme. This allows banks and building societies to offer loans to borrowers who only have a 5% deposit ...
Everest National Insurance Company has filed a lawsuit denying any obligation to cover a post-acquisition lawsuit by a credit union alleging fraud against two banks and their executives. The seller paid additional premium for an extended reporting period to report claims based on pre-acquisition wrongful conduct, but the insurer denied coverage on the ground that any claims asserted by the buyer are excluded under the D&O policy’s “insured vs ...
Following the controversial consultation exercise that ran earlier this year the Permitted Development right authorising conversions from uses falling within Use Class E to residential uses will be added to the statute books this week. What is coming into force is significantly pared down from what was proposed in the consultation exercise and David Mathias sets out some of the headlines below. The Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development etc ...
The UK will host the UN’s COP26 climate change conference in November 2021, but what is a COP – and what happened at the previous 25 COPs? 15 April 2021 marks 200 days until COP26 is due to start. Taking place in Glasgow from 1-12 November 2021, COP26 is the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) ...
