Most general practitioners handle a significant real estate caseload.
Lawyers assist individual clients with purchase and sale of their homes, arid with landlord-tenant problems, business clients with purchase and sale of business property, and developer clients with acquisition, financing, approvals, and development of large tracts of land. The basic real estate law area involves transactional matters, including buying and selling of real estate creating security interest in real estate, and the creation of interests such as easements and restrictions on property through covenants running with the land. In addition, lawyers assist clients in obtaining governmental land use approvals for changes and additions to property and for development of large tracts of real estate. More sophisticated transactions involve multi-jurisdictional development applications, structuring and document drafting for complex transactions, environmental clearances, participation in governmental programs that provide housing and redevelop urban neighborhoods, and the effect of civil rights legislation on real estate. The real estate area also incorporates real estate taxation and federal income tax aspects of real estate.