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In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, one of the pieces of legislation that was intended to be considered “Main Street”-friendly, which is another way of referring to legislation that is supportive of locally owned small businesses and residences, was the Protecting Tenants at Foreclosure Act (“PTFA”).  In short, this statute provided protection for…

Click here to read part one.

A lot of press has already been devoted to potential opportunities for the owners of residential properties in the Philadelphia area as a result of to the Pope’s visit in late September 2015. Considering the projected amount of available hotel/motel accommodations–approximately 30,000 units–pales in comparison to the expected 2 million-plus visitors, homeowners have been encouraged to become “short term landlords” and rent all or part of their properties to individuals visiting Philadelphia to see the Pontiff.

With that said, there has been little coverage of the potential effect that all of these visitors will have on commercial/retail property owners…in particular, those with large public parking areas, such as shopping centers that lie right outside the city center. Just recently, Mayor Nutter’s office announced a “traffic box” with boundaries from 38th Street to the west, South Street to the south, the Delaware River to the east and Girard to Ridge to Spring Garden to the north.

Further, regardless of whether the visitors are getting around Philly by foot, car or mass transit, they will need somewhere to stay, as well as eat and shop. This means that hotel accommodations, restaurant reservations and general retail traffic will surely increase. Given these opportunities to service the 2 million-plus coming to see the Pontiff, owners of any commercial/retail properties and parking lots should keep the following in mind to effectively manage the masses:…

Continue Reading Pontiff’s Visit to Philadelphia (Part II) – How Commercial/Retail Owners Can Best Manage the 2 Million-Plus

Prior to 2008, when the Great Recession and its aftereffects brought about a sea of changes in the mortgage lending arena, it was not an uncommon scenario, post-closing on a sale or refinance of real estate, to see a mortgage signed by only one of multiple owners of the real estate. In most of these instances, it was one spouse signing the mortgage and the real estate titled in both spouses’ names, but the spousal scenario was not the only one. Unmarried co-owners and other family members might be on title, but missing from the mortgage encumbering such title.
Continue Reading Mortgage Reformation in Pennsylvania

Suppose you have sold real estate to someone else and take a mortgage back from the buyer to secure payment of the sale price. Suppose, again, that you find out that there’s something wrong regarding that mortgage. Maybe the buyer claims he didn’t sign it. Maybe it describes the real estate incorrectly. Maybe it gets…

Traditionally, in Pennsylvania, an agreement of sale between seller and buyer “seals the deal” for the purchase of real estate. However, a prospective seller may also choose to have the buyer take possession of the property and “pay as he goes,” i.e. enter into an installment purchase agreement for the real estate. The core of…

The old Woody Guthrie song emphatically proclaiming “this land is your land, this land is my land” could well have its roots in the concept of a prescriptive easement in Pennsylvania. As recently explained in a Bucks County Court of Common Pleas case, Slice & Hook Enterprise v. McGonigal, 87 Bucks Co. L. Rep. 321, 329 (2014), a prescriptive easement exists when one establishes a right to use another’s land for some purpose, through “open, notorious, continuous, uninterrupted, adverse and hostile use” (although not inconsistent with the landowner’s use of the property), for twenty-one (21) years.
Continue Reading Prescriptive Easements