Real Property

Subscribe to Real Property via RSS

We’ll start in Boulder and with commercial development. In February, the Boulder City Council directed city staff to draft an ordinance that would raise the city’s affordable housing linkage fee on new commercial development from $12 per square foot to $25, $30, or $35 per square foot.  Boulder’s current $12 linkage fee is the highest such fee of any city in the country between the two coasts, with Palo Alto the highest in the country at $35.  Even so, City Council members expressed that the current fee is still low enough vis-a-vis fees on residential development to incentivize commercial development over residential development. And more commercial development without new housing only exacerbates the city’s acute jobs-housing disequilibrium. 
Continue Reading Boulder County Municipalities Look to Double Affordable Housing Linkage Fees

The Knick property. Source: Pacific Legal Foundation.

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court granted a petition for certiorari in the case of Knick v. Township of Scott.  In Knick, the Court is being asked to re-examine its 30-year-old doctrine requiring takings claimants to exhaust state court remedies before filing a claim for just compensation stemming from a regulatory taking in federal court.  The decision to grant the petition indicates that at least four justices agree that it’s time to consider eliminating procedural hurdles created by the Court’s 1985 decision in Williamson County Regional Planning Commission v. Hamilton Bank.
Continue Reading U.S. Supreme Court To Review New Takings Case—Will It Become Easier To File Takings Claims In Federal Courts?

As previously reported on this blog a Colorado Court of Appeals decision in 2015 allowed a developer/declarant to retain a right to consent to amendments to a common interest community’s declaration that require arbitration of construction defect claims.

The Colorado Supreme Court has now weighed in on the case involved, which is known as Vallagio at Inverness Residential Condo. Ass’n v. Metro. Homes, Inc., affirming the decision of the Court of Appeals.

Vallagio involved a residential development in which the declaration, created pursuant to the Colorado Common Interest Ownership Act (“CCIOA”) included certain dispute resolution provisions, including an arbitration requirement.  The dispute resolution provisions also stated that those provisions could “not ever be amended without the written consent of the Declarant,” who was the developer of the project.
Continue Reading Colorado Condominium Construction Defect Issue: Colorado Supreme Court Affirms the Right of Declarants for Condominium and Other Common Interest Communities to Require Binding Arbitration of Disputes

A survey of the two lots in question. Source: Pacific Legal Foundation.

In a 5-4 decision announced today, the U.S. Supreme Court held that Wisconsin could prohibit development of a subdivision lot—while allowing development on an adjacent lot owned by the same family—without paying just compensation.  The Court’s decision is a victory for states and local governments and a loss for property rights advocates.
Continue Reading U.S. Supreme Court Finds No Regulatory Taking in Wisconsin Case

In our April Client Alert, we reported on a possible breakthrough in construction defect reform legislation, which had passed the House and was moving to the Senate.  The Colorado Senate has now unanimously approved House Bill 1279, and sent it to Governor Hickenlooper, who is expected to sign the bill.  HB 1279 was…