Environmentally impacted real estate often has been effectively removed from the marketplace due to regulatory, economic and liability concerns of the owner, buyers, lenders or prospective users. Ever changing environmental laws and regulatory policies have made owning, using or developing contaminated properties highly risky. Any owner in the chain of title of such properties, as well as operators (tenants), could be held liable for impacting the environment and neighboring properties or for contributing to or causing personal injury as the result of the contamination. In most instances, they may also be held liable for the clean-up of any contamination, regardless of whether they caused it.

Lenders and corporate owners of such property have been attempting to eliminate or reduce potential exposure to liability which may exist at these sites. Unfortunately, government attempts to shield lenders from environmental liability have been mostly ineffective and most financial institutions remain concerned about such risks. These risks are exacerbated by a complicated and ever-changing legal and regulatory climate, the high cost of site investigations, and even more costly and sometimes ineffective remediation methods, and potential lawsuits and government enforcement actions. Most corporations are also concerned about the reporting and disclosure liabilities that accompany the ownership of contaminated properties. Accordingly, companies are attempting to avoid acquiring environmentally impacted properties and owners trapped with such properties in their portfolios have found it difficult to locate willing buyers.

The First Development solution: After completing our own investigation into the existing contamination on a site, and otherwise completing our due diligence pertaining to the property, we can purchase such properties and provide the owner with a commitment to remediate the environmental conditions with the intent of obtaining a No Further Remediation (NFR) letter from the appropriate governmental agency, thus relieving the seller, who is already in the chain of title, from any further concerns about environmental liability.

We can relieve lenders' concerns about becoming in the chain of title, especially resulting from a foreclosure. We can purchase the mortgage or other encumbrance from the lender so that the lender never becomes in the chain of title and thus can never become liable for any environmental clean-up.

We can also offer a sale/lease-back option to existing owner occupants who wish to continue to use the property while it is being remediated. Of course, this would only be considered provided the source of contamination would no longer continue to be a factor after our acquisition.

Our desire is to acquire contaminated properties that are capable of being remediated, clean them up and return them to productive use. Please contact us if you have environmentally impacted properties which are currently sitting idle or under-utilized. In most instances, we can structure proven, innovative and equitable solutions to free-up equity or eliminate continuing debt and other carrying costs and reduce or eliminate environmental liability.