Real Estate & Construction News Roundup (8/14/24) – Commercial Real Estate AI, Hotel Pipeline Growth, and Housing Market Improvements
September 23, 2024 —
Pillsbury's Construction & Real Estate Law Team - Gravel2Gavel Construction & Real Estate Law BlogIn our latest roundup, nonresidential spending drops, realtor payment structure changes, office vacancy rates soar, and more!
- A decline in mortgage rates and a drop in housing prices are giving buyers a potential path to securing homeownership. (Omar Mohammed, Newsweek)
- Starting August 17, new rules will roll out that overhaul the way Realtors get paid to help people buy and sell their homes. (Samantha Delouya, CNN)
- Spending dropped in almost half of nonresidential subcategories in June with the decrease stemming from higher interest rates, tighter credit conditions and a softening economy. (Sebastian Obando, Construction Dive)
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Pillsbury's Construction & Real Estate Law Team
Arbitration: For Whom the Statute of Limitations Does Not Toll in Pennsylvania
June 03, 2019 —
Gus Sara - The Subrogation StrategistIn Morse v. Fisher Asset Management, LLC, 2019 Pa. Super. 78, the Superior Court of Pennsylvania considered whether the plaintiff’s action was stayed when the trial court dismissed the plaintiff’s complaint after sustaining the defendants’ preliminary objections seeking enforcement of an arbitration clause in the contract at issue. The Superior Court—distinguishing between a defendant who files a motion to compel arbitration and a defendant who files preliminary objections based on an arbitration clause—held that, in the latter scenario, if the defendant’s preliminary objections are sustained, the statute of limitations is not tolled. This case establishes that, in Pennsylvania, plaintiffs seeking to defeat a challenge to a lawsuit based on a purported agreement to arbitrate need to pay close attention to the type of motion the defendant files to defeat the plaintiff’s lawsuit.
In Morse, the plaintiff entered into a contract with Fisher Asset Management (Fisher) in 2008 for investment-advisor services. The contract included a provision stating that any dispute, claim or controversy arising out of the agreement between the parties shall be determined by arbitration. In June 2009, the plaintiff filed a complaint against Fisher and two of its employees in the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County, alleging breach of fiduciary duty, breach of contract, negligence, and other claims. The defendants filed preliminary objections to the complaint seeking dismissal on grounds that the contract between the plaintiff and Fisher required that the dispute be determined by arbitration. The court sustained the preliminary objections and dismissed the complaint. The plaintiff did not appeal the court’s ruling.
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Gus Sara, White and WilliamsMr. Sara may be contacted at
sarag@whiteandwilliams.com
Liability policy covers negligent construction: GA high court
October 31, 2010 —
Michael Bradford in Business InsuranceATLANTA—Negligent construction that results in damage to surrounding property constitutes an occurrence under a commercial general liability policy, the Georgia Supreme Court has ruled.
In a 6-1 opinion Monday in
American Empire Surplus Lines Insurance Co. Inc. vs. Hathaway Development Co. Inc., the Georgia high court upheld a lower court ruling that the general contractor’s claim for damage caused by a subcontractor’s faulty plumbing work was covered.
The ruling on construction defects is the latest in number of such cases across the United States
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Reprinted courtesy of Michael Bradford of Business Insurance.
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Five Types of Structural Systems in High Rise Buildings
November 02, 2020 —
Chris Jackson - Construction ExecutiveToday, many cities in different countries have high-rise buildings or more popularly known as skyscrapers. The concept of skyscraper was first used to define the more than 137-foot-high buildings constructed in Chicago in 1885. It is generally defined as one that is taller than the maximum height that requires mechanical vertical transportation for people. Usually, these buildings only have limited uses and are primarily focused on functioning as residential apartments, hotels and office buildings, though they occasionally include retail and educational facilities. Because high-rise buildings are among the largest buildings built, it is necessary that their commercial and office functions require a high degree of flexibility.
That’s why it is important for high-rise buildings to have structural systems or structural frames—the assembly of interrelated or interdependent elements that forms a complex structure. These structural systems are built and designed for resisting different loads. To further understand how structural systems work, take the human body as a comparison. If human bones are weak and not properly aligned, the human body as a whole will not be able to perform or work well. Structural systems, in the same way, would not be able to take loads if not built properly. After all, no one wants a toppling skyscraper. To give the readers more information about structural systems in high-rise buildings, this article will discuss some of them.
Reprinted courtesy of
Chris Jackson, Construction Executive, a publication of Associated Builders and Contractors. All rights reserved.
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Thanks for Four Years of Recognition from JD Supra’s Readers’ Choice Awards
May 20, 2019 —
Garret Murai - California Construction Law BlogA big thank you to the folks at JD Supra and its readers for recognizing us in its Construction category for its 2019 Readers’ Choice Awards! We’re honored to be among the 228 authors recognize for their visibility, engagement and thought leadership out of more than 50,000 who have published articles on JD Supra this past year.
Congratulations as well to the other JD Supra 2019 Readers’ Choice Award recipients whose hard work encourages us to be better authors.
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Garret Murai, Wendel, Rosen, Black & Dean LLPMr. Murai may be contacted at
gmurai@wendel.com
Don’t Get Caught Holding the Bag: Hold the State Liable When General Contractor Fails to Pay on a Public Project
June 21, 2017 —
Sean Minahan - Construction Contractor AdvisorAccording to a quick Google search the term “holding the bag” comes from the mid eighteenth century and means be left with the onus of what was originally another’s responsibility. Nobody wants to be left holding the bag. But that is the situation our client (subcontractor) found themselves in when upon completion of a public project the general contractor went out of business before paying the remaining amount due and owing to our client.
Under Nebraska law, liens are not allowed against public projects. Instead the subcontractor is to make a claim on the payment and performance bond secured by the general contractor at the start of the project. In our case, the general contractor never secured a bond on which to make a claim; consequently leaving our client holding the bag.
Fortunately, we were able to hand the bag back to the State and obtain full payment for the services and materials provided.
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Sean Minahan, Lamson, Dugan and Murray, LLPMr. Minahan may be contacted at
sminahan@ldmlaw.com
When is a “Willful” Violation Willful (or Not) Under California’s Contractor Enforcement Statutes?
April 17, 2019 —
Garret Murai - California Construction Law BlogThe enforcement statutes applicable to the California Contractors’ State License Board aren’t exactly models in clarity. A few examples:
1. Business and Professions Code Section 7107: Abandonment without legal excuse of any construction project or operation engaged in or undertaken by the license as a contractor constitutes a cause for disciplinary action.
2. Business and Professions Code Section 7109: A willful departure in any material respect from accepted trade standards for good and workmanlike construction constitutes a cause for disciplinary action, unless the departure was in accordance with plans and specifications prepared by or under the direct supervision of an architect.
3. Business and Professions Code Section 7110: Willful or deliberate disregard and violation of the building laws of the state, or any political subdivision thereof, . . . or of the safety or labor laws or compensation insurance laws or Unemployment Insurance Code of the State, or of the Subletting and Subcontracting Fair Practice Act, or violation by any licensee of any provision of the Health and Safety Code or Water Code, relating to the digging, boring, or drilling of water wells, constitutes a cause for disciplinary action.
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Garret Murai, Wendel RosenMr. Murai may be contacted at
gmurai@wendel.com
Appetite for Deconstruction
July 02, 2024 —
Patrick Sisson - BloombergThe death of 206 College Avenue was slow and painstaking. Over several days in January 2022, dozens of bundled-up volunteers swarmed over the three-story property, a tired wooden boarding house built in the early 1900s in Ithaca, New York. Long used as rental apartments for Cornell University students, the 13-bedroom house was set to be demolished, along with several neighboring structures of the same vintage, to make room for a new multi-use complex. But while those buildings were quickly reduced to rubble by trackhoes, the house at 206 was deconstructed, piece by piece, so that its elements could be used again.
The Catherine Commons Deconstruction Project, an effort by Cornell’s Circular Construction Lab, was a large-scale pilot designed to show how building waste can be kept out of landfills. As volunteers pulled nails out of fir, oak, and walnut boards and hauled lumber off to be sorted and redistributed, a team of eight workers with heavy machinery began meticulously sawing, slicing and removing 8-by-18-foot panels of the old building. These were trucked off to a warehouse, where they’d be taken apart and recycled.
The labor that went into this process was substantially more than a typical demolition. But it avoided the societal penalties left behind at nearly every building and demo site across the US. The sheer volume of waste generated by knocking down, adding to or renovating buildings in the US is stunning: 600 million tons of construction demolition waste annually, according to the most recent EPA estimate from 2018. Roughly 75% gets ground up into aggregate and fill, and only a small share is recycled and reused, necessitating production of new material for the next project. For scale, municipal solid waste only accounts for 300 million tons every year.
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Patrick Sisson, Bloomberg