Legal property evaluation

Legal property evaluation is a process of making sure that a piece of real estate is properly registered where it is needed, that all the necessary documents are in place, and that the property is in all ways legal and does not violate any law.

Most often, a legal inspection involves assessing the following parameters of a property:

• current registered owner
• history of ownership
• declared residents
• encumbrances (e.g. active mortgages)
• constituent parts of the property
• intended and possible usage
• legality of construction and renovation works
• possible issues with utilities (in terms of documentation, taxes and legal matters, not the actual supply or their quality)

By extension, legal evaluation may also include the analysis of a purchase contract. It is evaluate whether the agreement is correctly drafted, includes all the necessary information and does not contain factual mistakes. A couple of the most important items in such an agreement is the definition of the property subject to selling and a detailed procedure of transferring the payment. These are especially important when purchasing land, as usually land includes a number of other objects (e.g. ponds, streams, riverbanks, different types of soil, forests, etc.), and incorrect documentation may prevent you, the new owner, from using these resources in the future.

All in all, a legal evaluation is one of the basic needs for any property buyer. After you become a new owner of a real estate, you become liable for all the issues with that estate. If you do not check them beforehand, they may create multiple complications in the future, including the need to sell the property and a number of penalty fees, rendering its initial purchase meaningless. A legal evaluation can also determine if any additional, non-standard documents will be needed in the process of buying, thus allowing you to prepare them beforehand and save time.