Allen Buchanan: The environment in which we deal

One of the differences between a single family residential sale and a commercial sale is the requirement for an environmental report. Also known as a Phase I Assessment or an ESA, these beauties crept into our commercial real estate cribs in the mid-1980s.
According to our friends at Wikipedia, “…demand increased dramatically for this type of study in the 1980s following judicial decisions related to liability of property owners to effect site cleanup … The U.S. courts have h