Video Summary

Hi.  What does eminent domain mean?  Eminent domain is usually in conjunction with a government entity such as the Florida Department of Transportation or a county building a road, although it can be used by utilities to obtain easements.  The government must compensate private property owners if they take their property and the process is called eminent domain and is a lawsuit that is filed to take someone’s property for public use.

The process usually starts by the governmental entity or utility contacting a property owner and asking them to donate the property.  And usually the answer, it may be yes or no depending on if they need to road to go by their property or through their property.  They don’t have to give the property to the governmental agency and the governmental agency or utility will then get an appraisal and tell them that they will pay them this certain amount of money.

The property owner does not have to take the amount that’s offered.  If they don’t, they can negotiate with the county but usually the county will proceed with what they call a quick take program or lawsuit, which is an eminent domain proceeding whereby they deposit the money that they’ve offered to the property owner in the registry at the court and the court will then let the county take the property.

Then if you hire a lawyer and you negotiate further with the county then the price can go up once the property owner gets his own appraisals.  If they can’t ever agree on or settle on an amount for the property, it then goes to a trial by jury and in Florida there’s only two times that you get twelve people in a jury box: one is a first-degree murder case and the other is an eminent domain proceeding.  And then the jury of your peers are the ones that would determine how much money you would receive for your property in an eminent domain proceeding.  One other nice thing about Florida’s eminent domain proceeding is the government entity is responsible for paying your attorney fees, which is a percentage of the increase between the amount that you receive and the amount that’s offered by the government or utility that’s taking your property.

So if you have any questions about eminent domain or if you get a letter in the mail that they’re gonna be taking your property, give me a call at 727-847-2288.

Video Summary

Do I need an attorney to evict a tenant?  Well, the answer to that is no, you don’t if you know how to evict them.  Usually, you evict tenants because they haven’t paid the rent, and that starts by the landlord giving the tenant a three-day notice.  A three-day notice is spelled out in the Florida statutes, and it can only be for rent.  So if you’re going to do the eviction yourself, you need to look up that notice and deliver it to the tenant and give them three days from the date that you deliver the notice.  You don’t count the day you give it to them, and then you start counting the days.  You can’t count Saturday or Sunday or a legal holiday, and after the three days have expired and they haven’t paid the rent or vacated, you’re then in a position to file a complaint for eviction, and that’s where you can try and find the law suit or complaint.  I think there’s some forms out at the law library or whatever, and you can complete those and basically attach the notice to them saying that they haven’t paid the rent and that they owe you the money, and then you can file that in court.

And then after that, you then have to see if they file a response.  If they do file some response, the judge will then usually set a hearing to determine the amount of rents owed, and you have to appear in court.  Sometimes it just sits there and nothing happens, and that’s whenever you get frustrated or need to talk to a lawyer, or you go to a hearing and the judge doesn’t evict them and sends you on your way.  So at that point, you probably do need a lawyer, and then we’ll have to look at your handy work to see whether or not – how good a lawyer you are.

So no, you don’t need a lawyer if you know what you’re doing.  Some landlords who have multiple properties are a little pro at it and so that they’ve been doing it by themselves for some time, whereas if this is the first time that you’ve tried to evict a tenant, you probably need to go ahead and hire a lawyer and then copy what he does so that the next time you’ll be able to do it ’cause hopefully he’ll make it look easy for you.

So no, you don’t need a lawyer.  But if you do need one, well, give me a call at 727-847-2288.

Video Summary

Can I remove an easement from my property?  Well, that’s really a good question, and easement law is a complicated area of law.  An easement, first let’s define what that is.  It means that someone owns the property, and then someone else has the right to use it for a particular purpose.  So you have the burdened property, which is the person who owns it, and then you have the benefited property or a benefited person who has a right to use your property for particular purposes.  If they’re private easements such as utility easements, things such as that, or usually you have ingress and egress easements, meaning a way to get in and out of property, those cannot be eliminated from your title unless you own both the burdened property, where the easement is situated, as well as the benefited property.  So an easement going from Parcel A to Parcel B, you can’t eliminate that private easement.  However, if you own both A and B, well, then you can extinguish the easement, or the easement goes away since it’s no longer needed since you own both parcels.

Now, if you’re talking about an easement or a road right of way that the public – that’s shown on a plat or something like that with the county, you can petition the county to vacate a road right of way if – that’s really not an easement.  It’s usually a road right of way, and the county can issue a – if they decide to do so, can issue an order or a – well, whatever the Board of County Commissioners issues to vacate the road right of way.  And then the road is then – one half of it goes to each property owner on each side of the road.  But that takes a petition, and be sure that you don’t have anybody else out there that could object to it.  So it’s difficult to get rid of private easements.

Road right of ways can be vacated if they’re basically abandoned or have never been used, such as an old plat.  So if you’ve got an easement across your property, well, you need to see who it’s benefiting and possibly be able to get rid of it that way, but that’s most difficult to do.

Anybody have any other question about easements, well, give me a call at 727-847-2288.