Forum: Lawyers
December 1, 2008
Aggressive lawyer
My house needs urgent repairs in a part that is only accessible from the neighbor's property.
I have been trying to get permission from the neighbor's management co for very many months but they are unresponsive at best.
Looking through the archives I found some comments saying the law provides for this situation, and I have the right to access their property in order to maintain mine. Moreover, some comments suggest there are aggressive lawyers that can get me access really fast.
Have any of you hired a lawyer with that purpose or can you recommend an aggressive one?
Thanks,
Ray
November 17, 2008
Recommendations for a attorney specializing in real estate litigation
Hi,
Any recommendations for a lawyer specializing in litigation by condo associations against the Sponsor for breach of contract and/or fraud? We're a tiny building (2 families), so we're hoping to find someone aggressive but with reasonable rates.
November 13, 2008
Lawyer for Property Dispute?
I need a recommendation for a lawyer that handles property disputes.
The apartment building next door has a retaining wall that runs along my backyard and is crumbling. If it fails I'm afraid my yard will collapse with it since my yard is higher than the apartment building alley. I would like to build a deck and landscape but I want them to fix the wall first. I spoke to the management company of the building and they told me the trees in my yard are causing the wall to fail so its my responsibility to pay for it and I should get ready and hire a lawyer! I met with an architect who said that the building owns the wall and they are responsible for it no matter what the reason for its failing. He said that my property and trees were there first, their alley was built lower than the pre-existing land and the wall was built up against my property, which all adds up to them having to legally maintain the wall.
So does anyone know a lawyer who can help with this sort of issue?
November 2, 2008
Wills/Estates Lawyer in Brooklyn/NYC
Does anyone have a recommendation for a good, not too expensive lawyer for a legal question regarding a will? It is not a complicated issue, but I'm asking for an out-of-state friend who is administering a will in NY. Any help is greatly appreciated!
October 28, 2008
Purchase Contract Questions (help!)
Backstory: Am buying a place, haven't done so in NYC before, let alone done a condo purchase, so I'm just not sure what's standard language.
Yes, I am working with an attorney, but I have been given loads of good advice from you folks and I would feel better knowing that these particular terms (that the atty says aren't usually negotiable) are actually common and not things I should be stressing about:
-Resale of the unit: Sponsor is asking for right of first refusal - that we will give them first dibs on purchasing the unit. If normal, is there a standard term length for notifying them of the pending sale and receiving their response?
-Damage to the unit before closing: If there is significant damage ("fire or other casualty"), seller can resolve in a "reasonable amount of time"
and it won't void our contract. Now, we have a walk away date so that we're not waiting indefinitely to close, but is the Damage clause legit?
-If we do walk away, within our rights, are we entitled to interest on the deposit?
Thanks, Brownstoners!
October 1, 2008
Real estate lawyer (cont)
Okay. Taking a step back a second from my more frantic post on Monday. I was really just upset at the atty for losing us the closing on Friday and all the extra work it will now take for our (still unknown) closing date next week (hopefully).
Today my wife called the bank attorney to follow up on the doc that my atty had forwarded and realized that he had not even seen it. We almost lost yet another 1-2 days because my attorney was "at a closing" and too busy to follow through on the one simple task we have needed for a week.
We are anxious to get our contractors in, but didn't do the "silly" thing that cmu mentioned and actually schedule anyone. Our only real losses will be weekend time that we could be preparing the house for contractors and possibly $2000 if we lose a month getting the attached rental unit filled.
That being said -- why do we put up with these people and what is the recourse against these terrible attorneys? I have email evidence of two events where he did not act in our interests to get this done and forced the closing date back further than necessary. We have caught him lying twice when we have had the chance to verify his claims (mostly just stalling -- blaming delays on other people when they're completely free/waiting) and question many of his "out at a closing" or "they had two closings today" as reasons to delay close to a week further still. I realize RE attys have to be at closings, but come on -- he has a blackberry, something that we actually paid up for because of the illusion he can multi-task and stay in touch.
Somewhere in this, I realize that these people are in a service driven industry. I have asked multiple times what exactly I am paying him for, but am bound to the fixed fee that we agreed on. Is my only recourse to post a bad review on the internet and maybe complain to a few agencies?
September 30, 2008
Help -- real estate lawyer problems
I have a little bit of a problem with my real estate attorney. It started with a verbal disagreement we had -- I won't go into too many details, but it was the result of him not making the appropriate phone calls in time, causing us to delay our closing because he realized we needed a document from us at 2:30 the day before the Jewish holiday when both my wife and I were working (we had until 4 to get him said document). Now I am beginning to question his ability when there are exactly 4 business days (that aren't Jewish holidays -- and all three lawyers involved are Jewish) until our last possible closing date and this title restriction is still not cleared up with the bank. If this somehow doesn't go through, we risk losing an over $150,000 deposit we paid. What is my recourse? Can I get another lawyer to step in and take over? Would this just take longer and be less likely to help?
The biggest problem is that I work in the finance industry and don't exactly have a lot of free time to deal with this right now because of work. I'd like to just trust my lawyer to get this done, but he has given me absolutely no reason to do this at this point.
September 10, 2008
"On or About" Definition
hey! when a real estate contract in NY specifies a closing date of "on or about" -- what is the typical/customary amount of time that provides to set a closing date?
August 31, 2008
Need advice on evicting squatter
My 93 yr old grandmother lives with her daughter in an apt and owns a house nearby. The daughter keeps her cats there but nobody is currently living in the property. Recently she asked some homeless man to go to the house to feed the cats every day. He decided to move his girlfriend and dog and property into the house and refuses now to leave and threatened her and said she should try to spend the time and money to get him evicted through housing court. I called the police and asked them to evict the man since he has no lease, no rent receipt, no mail over thirty days old, no witness testimony and even no keys!!! The police refuse to act however. Amazingly they claim that they (the police) know that he is there over thirty days because "they saw him in front of the house some time ago" I said he was visiting over a month ago perhaps to feed cats but only two weeks earlier seems to have moved in. I told the police also that my mother is not the owner of the property and no longer lives there and that my grandmother never who is sole owner never authorized this man to even go into the property. They claim she is the custodian of the property however and let this guy in and he is there over thirty days and they can do nothing. I begged them to talk to the neighbors who would confirm that he is not there that long and I said that I myself was at the house three weeks before and he was not there. The officer refused to talk to the neighbors and said "maybe he was there and left and returned". Now it is labor day and soon IT WILL be over thirty days due to police inaction. Any advice will be very welcome. Who do you appeal to when the police will not help you with someone breaking the law? They even said they will arrest me for illegal eviction if I lock the guy out!!!!!
August 23, 2008
RE Attorney Recommendation
My husband and I are looking to make an offer on a co-op in Kensington/Ditmas Park, and would appreciate any recommendations regarding a dependable RE attorney who can help us out. Thanks.