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The region’s commercial and residential real estate sectors are seeing the effects from Ian’s destruction. Greenberg Traurig’s Alan Sheppard told Orlando Business Journal “This may have an impact on pending transactions – things that haven’t closed yet that are in the pipeline.”
Peter C. Vilmos of Burr & Forman, specializes in construction litigation. “The first thing that we’re thinking of, and what we’re already hearing, is ‘what are we going to have to do to [building] codes?’” Vilmos said. Vilmos recalled the way codes were stiffened in the wake of Hurricane Andrew.
On the commercial side, Vilmos noted that commercial properties such as warehouses are often in low-lying or flood-prone areas, prompting both landlord and lessees to be proactive at the outset of agreements. “Depending on how the lease is written, and depending on what went wrong, if the inventory is flooded and therefore unsellable – who’s going to pay for that cost?”