Baton Rouge Real Estate Lawyers Blog

You do not have to drive for long when you leave Baton Rouge before you find yourself in what the American Farmland Trust calls "high quality farmland." Somewhere between 25 and 30 percent of Louisiana's acreage is devoted to farming, both as residential farms and commercial operations. We may tackle commercial farms in the future, but our focus right now is on the residential farms, the owner-operated concerns.

A recent survey showed that 1 in 5 farmers does not have a succession plan for the farm. What happens when the farmer dies or cannot farm anymore? For those that have some kind of plan in place, succession is usually included in an estate plan or a will. While an estate plan should ensure the property changes hands without delay, the future of the farming operation itself is often not addressed.

Assumption Parish has been battling the Bayou Corne sinkhole since August 2012. The parish's troubles were complicated this past week when breaches formed in the incomplete earthen levee that encircles the 71-acre site. The levee is there to protect the surrounding swamplands from the 15-acre sinkhole -- and the sinkhole continues to emit gases and to swallow trees. 

The levee, however, can do nothing to protect the residential properties nearby. Those homeowners are still weighing their options as they wait for the earth to fall from under their homes and their lives on Bayou Corne, according to their legislative representative.

Two bills seeking to regulate salt domes and solution-mined caverns have passed their first major hurdle at the Louisiana State Legislature. The House approved HB 493 and HB 494 on May 2, just hours before floodwaters breached the containment levee encircling the state's most notorious sinkhole. Hundreds have already been evacuated from residential areas near the site in Assumption Parish.

We have talked about the sinkhole at length in past posts. The surface of the sinkhole now covers more than 15 acres; the levee surrounds a 71-acre area. When the sinkhole first appeared in August 2012, the state's lawmakers began to look for ways to prevent such disasters. These two bills are the advance guard of those efforts.

Somehow, using the word "boom" when you are talking about natural gas and other petrochemical industry real estate deals feels like tempting fate. We are trying, too, to avoid the words "explosion" and "fueling." We will settle for: These two industries are behind the positive outlook for commercial real estate in Louisiana and Baton Rouge.

Local real estate professionals presented their 2012 results and 2013 outlook at a recent forum, and for the most part the news was upbeat. Office space and residential trends were positive, but the best news came in the commercial real estate sector, with the recent announcement that one company will relocate a methanol plant to Geismar as the highlight.

We are continuing our discussion of a recent Louisiana district court ruling that a Uniform Development Code ordinance is unconstitutional and unenforceable. The ordinance in question requires that real estate zoned A-1 residential be occupied by a "single family" and includes a specific definition of family.

A landlord challenged the ordinance in a lawsuit against the Baton Rouge city-parish government. He argued that the definition of family -- "related by blood, marriage or legal adoption" -- excluded non-traditional families like same-sex couples with children and foster families. As such, he argued, it violates residents' constitutional rights to privacy, assembly and equal protection.

The idea of family has changed dramatically since the days of "Leave It to Beaver." Now, in fact, family seems to have become a hot-button issue. Here in Baton Rouge, the word made headlines recently when a Louisiana state judge found a longstanding city-parish ordinance unconstitutional and unenforceable. The ruling far from settles the matter, though: The City of Baton Rouge/Parish of East Baton Rouge government plans to appeal the decision.

The ordinance, according to the city-parish Office of Neighborhoods website, requires that all homes in areas zoned A-1 residential be single-family residences. In turn, the code defines family as "an individual or two (2) or more persons who are related by blood, marriage or legal adoption living together." It is that definition that has been the focus of one landlord's complaint -- and his neighbors' complaints against him.

Last month, we discussed a real estate development in Tangipahoa Parish that had stalled when the federal government revealed some interesting information. A section of the land had been used as a bombing and gunnery range during World War II, and there was a chance that there were still unexploded shells and live ammunition lying around. The developers had missed the information in their title search, because the federal government and the landowners had failed to record the lease.

What struck most of the people involved as odd was that it had taken the government 70 years to check out the parcel to see if abatement was needed. It turns out, though, that Louisiana is not the only place where the federal government seems to have lost track of its property interests. And the Government Accountability Office believes it is time to do something about that.

We recently wrote about the foreclosure settlement with mortgage servicing companies and the first wave of payments to homeowners. The first wave of checks were mailed this week, as announced, to about 1.4 million homeowners who had been burned by unscrupulous mortgage servicing companies' foreclosure practices. As we said, the majority of the homeowners will receive $300 -- if they can cash the check.

Some kind of mix-up with the middleman in the settlement resulted in more than a few checks bouncing. The reason: insufficient funds. No one is sure of the exact number of affected homeowners, nor is anyone saying how many Louisiana homeowners were among them.