CEC’s integrated approach to due diligence services is designed to provide timely information to financial, legal, commercial, and industrial clients planning real property transactions.
Failing to identify, evaluate, qualify, and manage liabilities during the decision-making process for the sale, refinance, or development of real property can result in financial pitfalls. Unknown liabilities can turn a once-great deal into a financial or legal quagmire. For example:
- A property with environmental contamination may result in a lower-than-anticipated rate of return due to remedial and legal liabilities.
- A building with substandard utilities, roofing, or structural elements may require repair before it can be leased at the anticipated rate.
- An acquired business with accumulated hazardous materials or a poor environmental compliance record may require unanticipated expenditures for cleanup or environmental controls.
- An undeveloped property may contain physical limitations such as poor soil conditions, geological limitations, stormwater management issues, and other concerns that will directly influence development costs.
- Permitting issues may increase costs and delay development schedules.
Recognizing and considering liabilities when planning a transaction is essential to the decision process. The ability to effectively manage liabilities depends upon early identification, quantification, and communication of the risks to decision-makers.
CEC helps clients define risk tolerance, schedule, and cost parameters, and develops a scope of services based on those parameters to keep clients apprised of work-in-progress, and, most importantly, potential risks identified early in the process.
Due Diligence Services Include:
- Environmental Assessments (Transaction Screens, Phase I and II Assessments)
- Property (Facility) Condition Assessments
- Utility Evaluations
- Environmental Compliance Audits
- Hazardous Material Surveys
- Ecological Resources Reviews and Permitting Evaluation (Wetland Identification/Delineation, Jurisdictional Waters, Threatened and Endangered Species)
- Land Survey Services (ALTA/NSPS and Geophysical Surveys)
- Land Ordinance Reviews
- Geotechnical Investigations
- Floodplain/Floodway Identification
- Stormwater Management Assessments
- Site Evaluations
- Land Planning
These services can be provided individually or in combination and can run concurrently or in succession.
