Brindle McCormack, P.C.

WHAT IS REAL ESTATE?

Real estate consists of physical components, such as crust of the earth, buildings and things permanently attached to the land, vegetation growing on the land, the airspace above the land, and the subsurface below the crust. It also consists of legal rights, such as the right to sell, right to possess, right to use, right to exclude others, right to mortgage, right to lease to tenants, right to construct buildings on it, right to make decisions about the land, right to give other persons legal rights to the land, etc.

 

Real estate ownership can be acquired in different ways, including :

 

Purchase

Inheritance

Gift

Foreclosure of a security interest, where the real estate had been collateral for a loan or other debt

Adverse possession, in which a squatter can obtain legal rights after possessing real estate for a certain      

minimum number of years

 

Attorneys are often involved in assisting clients when they acquire real estate. A lawyer's work can include preparing or reviewing the sale agreements to buy property, reviewing title reports including any exceptions, helping clients remove exceptions including initiating quiet title lawsuits if necessary, assisting a client in deciding how title should be held, writing legal descriptions, examining surveys, preparing or reviewing loan documents, drafting deeds, attending the closing at a title company, explaining documents to a client at closing, reviewing HUD settlement statements, preparing escrow instructions, and providing advice on a wide variety of real estate issues.

 

Real estate law can also include other topics such as :

 

Leasing

Zoning

Financing

Foreclosing

Litigating

 

An important part of owning real estate is how to hold title. Many choices are available to purchasers including :

 

Husband's name only

Wife's name only

Husband and wife as tenants by the entiretyHusband and wife as tenants in common

Husband and wife as joint tenants with right of survivorship

One person's name

Two or more people as tenants in common

Two or more people as joint tenants with right of survivorshipSole proprietorship

C corporation

S corporation

General partnership's name

Names of all partners in a general partnership

Limited partnership

Limited liability company

Limited liability partnership

Joint venture

Revocable living trust

Business trust

Other possibilities for types of titleholder including combinations of the above

 

The type of title holder selected has significant consequences including which party is the owner of the property when one of the owners dies. Other important things to consider include can an owner pass the ownership through a will or to heirs if the deceased owner has no will, do the ownership percentages change when one of the owners dies, how is each type of titleholder created, does the type selected require any additional work after the type has been created, what are the tax consequences of the selected type of titleholder when owning real estate, how easy is it to sell an interest in the real estate with the type of titleholder selected, can one owner sell his or her interest if the other owners do not sell, and can creditors of an owner obtain the real estate through lien or foreclosure remedies.

 

Many types of real estate exist in Oregon. We have :

 

Single family homes

Duplexes

Triplexes

Quadplexes

Apartments

Townhouses

Rowhouses

Condominiums

Time shares

Office buildings

Shopping malls

Strip malls

Big box retail stores

Other retailIndustrial

AgriculturalPublic use such as schools

Publicly owned land such as national forests, military property, and other government owner property

Parks and recreational land

All beaches along the Pacific Ocean owned by the public, instead of private owners

 

The laws that affect each type of property can vary widely, depending on the type and the city / county where it is located.