Week Ending December 3, 2021

Recently, Wyoming and New Mexico issued regulations setting forth standards for Remote Online Notarizations (RON).

What happens when a property owner agrees with a regulator and a prior owner/operator to accept a commercial-level clean-up with institutional controls, but before the remediation is complete and the deed restriction recorded, a new owner takes title and insists on a clean-up to residential standards? Under New Jersey’s Industrial Site Remediation Act (ISRA), who wins? The remediating party, ruled the New Jersey Superior Court, Appellate Division, on December 7, 2021, in an unpublished decision captioned Cozzoli Machine Company v. Crown Real Estate Holdings, Inc., No. A-1733-19.

On paper, Eddie George was a savvy real estate investor, chairman of VLM Investments LLC that bought and sold nearly $1 million worth of properties in Buncombe County in a little more than a year.

Property is purchased by a married couple with money contributed by both. The husband qualifies for a purchase-money mortgage for additional funds to pay the purchase price. Title is vested in the husband’s name as separate property which required the wife to execute a quitclaim deed conveying any interest of the wife to the husband. The husband advises the wife the quitclaim is normal procedure when buying property. The mortgage payments are made from community funds. Later, the husband dies. In a probate action, the husband’s successor seeks to establish title to the property as the deceased husband’s separate property.

An owner conveys a parcel of property to a local agency reserving the right to use the property for general agricultural purposes and to construct streets which do not cross the county’s pipeline placed under the property conveyed. The owner leases their property adjacent to the parcel conveyed and the rights to use the parcel conveyed to a tenant as a parking lot as authorized by a permit granted by the agency which required a monthly fee be paid by the owner to the agency.

Authorities in the provinces say that the issuance of land titles to local people seems to be happening more efficiently than in previous years, anecdotal evidence which is borne out by an end of year national report by the Land Management Ministry.

The summit of real estate used to be the domain of the “cowboys” — the Harry Helmsleys, Bill Zeckendorfs and Harry Macklowes, buccaneers who mastered the art of relationship-building and taking outsized risks. The industry then came to be dominated by the “suits,” structured-finance whizzes such as Jon Gray and Marc Holliday who brought a Wall Street ethos to the business.

The next shift is to the “technologists,” according to The Real Deal‘s Hiten Samtani.

Amid the long-running legal wrangling over a Lower East Side garden, a developer is firing back against green thumbs’ accusations, including that he angrily threatened to dump out a port-a-potty onto the green space.

For agents interested in growing their business by expanding into multiple states, we’re here to make the process simple and profitable. We offer you one point of contact to streamline your options and solutions.

The illusion shown above is called "The Phantom Queen." It took a lot of work to make it perfect, but that work paid off as the illusion by Matt Pritchard was crowned the Best Illusion of the Year in the annual contest held by the Neural Correlate Society. Check out the illusion that won second place below. Don't read the description until after you've seen the video.

For Christmas, The Hatching Cat has strung together similar stories in several animals posts with holiday themes. One is a list of cats who saved lives in New York around the holiday season between the years of 1904 and 1932.

At the beginning of the movie, during the 1920s, Building & Loans were huge. But by the end of the movie, right after World War 2, in real life, most Building & Loans had already gone out of business, or had been converted into Savings & Loans.