Since it has been several months since I last wrote in this blog about my own ADU project, it seemed that people might be curious to know where things stand. Also, reflecting general increased interest and activity in this type of housing stock, I have been seeing more ADU matters in my own law practice. Given these developments, I
If you own commercial real estate in Santa Clara County, you recently received a mailing from the Assessor’s Office notifying you of the assessed value of your property. With your receipt of that notice, the clock is now ticking on your right under California law to challenge that value assessment. My goal here is to offer some guidance to investors
Many of us who live in California, especially the suburbs, are conditioned to expect free parking in the places we live, work, shop and take recreation. We expect laws to require it, builders to provide it and operators of commercial establishments to offer it, at least to their customers. As a matter of fact, the availability of parking has been
California law governing ADUs has been revised pursuant to two new “clean up measures”, SB 897 and AB 2221, which went into effect January 1, 2023. These new laws clarify and correct several different unforeseen barriers to the approval and construction of ADUs that had surfaced after the adoption of previous ADU legislation by the state. These revisions will require
As you may know, accessory dwelling units (“ADUs”) have been an interest of mine here for several years as one of the many ways that the California legislature has tried to address our housing shortage. For those of you who are not familiar with this subject, ADUs, which were formerly known under California law as “secondary units”, and
Last October, I had the privilege of attending the Real Estate Fall Gathering and Coppola Family Speaker Series, presented by the Fitzgerald Institute for Real Estate (“FIRE”) at my alma mater, the University of Notre Dame. FIRE was established in 2019 to educate and inspire the next generation of real estate professionals at Notre Dame to “create places of
Over the last several years, a plethora of legislation has been adopted in Sacramento with the intention of spurring housing development in California in response to our housing crisis, with a number of these laws being previously noted in this blog. Hand in hand with these efforts, the Association of Bay Area Governments (“ABAG”), a regional planning agency, has
A twelve-year saga of pitched battles between housing advocates, developers and an obdurate NIMBY (“Not in My Backyard”) assemblage was finally resolved last month by California’s First District Court of Appeal. In a victory for California housing proponents, the City of Lafayette’s approval of the 315-unit Terraces of Lafayette project has been upheld against the challenges of the Save Lafayette
The California Environmental Quality Act (“CEQA”) has been a regular topic of discussion in this blog over the years, from challenges to local zoning bans against mobile medical marijuana dispensaries, to the expansion of the use of “categorical exemptions” from environmental review, to modifications to the methods of measuring traffic impacts of development projects. As one of
Recently, a corporate client asked me to assist it in ascertaining whether it was properly handling the common area maintenance (CAM) charges under its lease with a triple net tenant, a national medical services provider. As I pored over the terms of the lease and reviewed its CAM provisions with my client, not for the first time did I wonder,