California Commercial Real Estate Legal Questions

You would contact a real estate attorney to represent your father to sue the general partner for an accounting, partition, breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, intentional interference with an economic advantage, and any other causes of action that he may have.  Contact an attorney for a full consultation.... Read More

Most attorneys are skeptical of working on a case/client issue for a set price.  This is because they do not know how long or how intricate the case/client issue will be, and our time is our livelihood.   However, if the projects are a series of component and duplicative parts, a set fee per project is certainly something that can be negotiated.  The issue lies when there is a particular project that goes sideways on all, and the attorney is stuck working for months for free because he/she agreed to a set price but did not anticipate the enormous amount of extra work (time).  ... Read More

Generally, in a condominium as defined in California, the association is required to repair utiliies that serve more than one unit.  However, the developer may have allocated repair duties differently in the Declaration (CC&Rs) for the project.  You will need to have the CC&Rs reviewed by an attorney to determine how repair obligations are divided. ... Read More

No, the borrower has a constitutional right to file for bankruptcy, so long as the borrower qualifies for bankruptcy protection.  Usually, the biggest hurdle to filing for bankruptcy is that the borrower must be insolvent.  While filing for bankruptcy would stall any foreclosure sale, the lender can still request the bankruptcy court for relief from the automatic stay.  This would just postpone the foreclosure, but would not stop it.... Read More

I assume that you hold a first deed of trust against the property and that you will foreclose by power of sale foreclosure and not by judicial foreclosure. If you foreclose, then at the trustee sale you will have the option to make a full credit bid, meaning that you can bid on the property up to the unpaid balance of the loan.  If a buyer bids more than your full credit bid, then they will own the property. In other words, one of two things will happen at the trustee sale: either you will own the property, or another buyer will purchase the property and pay off your loan. If a third party purchases the property at the trustee sale, any excess proceeds of the sale will first be applied to the costs of the foreclosure, property taxes, then to pay off your lien, then to pay off any junior liens, then the remainder gets paid to the property owner. Property taxes are often a major consideration in foreclosure actions.  You can check the county tax assessor's website to see if the property taxes are current.  If they are left unpaid for 5 years, then the county tax collector can sell the property at the county tax sale and wipe out your deed of trust. Assuming that the owner of the property is eligible to file for bankruptcy (the debtor must be insolvent such that their debts are greater than their assets) then the automatic stay will pause the foreclosure action until either you request a relief from the automatic stay or the bankruptcy is dismissed.... Read More

I've reviewed many commercial leases for tenants and I've had my changes accepted by the landlord.  These form leases that most landlords use usually do not fit the particular business of the tenant and need to be reviewed for relevance and to ensure that the negotiated terms of the tenancy are all in the written lease agreement.... Read More