Real estate law / $1,500 to $5,000
Property deals without the drama.
Agents handle the deal. Escrow handles the money. Nobody handles the legal questions until something goes wrong. We do, early, and for a posted fee.
Purchases and sales
Before you sign the purchase agreement.
The standard California form runs sixteen pages and the agent is paid when it closes. A one hour review before you sign costs $1,500 and has killed more than one bad deal.
- Purchase agreement review
Contingencies, timelines, what the seller actually promised and how you get your deposit back. Same day turnaround when escrow is already running.
- Off market and family sales
Buying from a relative or a neighbor without agents. We draft the agreement, coordinate escrow and keep the family on speaking terms.
- Taking title the right way
In your trust, in your LLC, as community property with right of survivorship. The vesting on the deed decides what happens at death and in a lawsuit.
- Seller disclosure review
What you have to disclose, what you do not, and how to write it so it does not come back as a claim two years later.
Easements and disputes
Fences, driveways, trees and tenants.
Hillside lots in Los Gatos come with shared driveways, old easements and surveys that disagree with the fence. Most of it settles with a letter and a recorded agreement, not a lawsuit.
- Easement drafting and recording for shared driveways and utilities
- Boundary and encroachment disputes, starting with a survey and a letter
- Tree, view and drainage disputes under the town's ordinances
- Residential landlord matters: leases, notices, deposits, move-out
- Small commercial leases for owners buying their own building
- Quiet title and lot line adjustments
Letters, easements and recorded agreements run $1,500 to $3,000 flat. A negotiated dispute with a settlement agreement runs toward $5,000. If it has to go to court, that is hourly at $425 with a written estimate and a frank talk first about whether the fence is worth it.
We do not handle evictions past the notice stage or construction defect litigation, and we will say so on the first call.
Deeds and trusts
The house has to be inside the trust.
The most common real estate problem we fix was not caused by a deal at all. A family signed a trust years ago, refinanced, and the lender's title company deeded the house back out of the trust to close the loan. Nobody deeded it back in. The trust is fine. The house is not in it. At death, it goes through probate anyway.
A trust transfer deed, recorded with the county and paired with the right Preliminary Change of Ownership Report, fixes it for $450 and keeps your property tax base intact. We check every client's deed at the start of an estate plan and again whenever a refinance crosses our desk. Trustees selling a house in administration get the sale paperwork inside that engagement.
Buying a building for the company? Which entity takes title is a formation question and a tax question, and we will get your CPA on the call. Book the consult and bring the deed, the preliminary title report or the fence photos, whichever applies.