BKBH's Real Estate & Agriculture Practice Group Attorneys:

• Mark Etchart (Helena), Chair, BKBH Real Estate Practice Group
  • Dave McLean (Missoula)
  • Andy Adamek (Helena)
  • Kim Beatty (Helena)
  • Mark Taylor (Helena)
  • Joanne McCormack (Missoula)
  • Dan Auerbach (Missoula)
  • John Tietz (Helena)
  • Troy Bentson (Bozeman)
  • Steve Wade (Helena)
  • Jessie Luther (Helena)
  • Kyle Nelson (Bozeman)

Real Estate & Agriculture

Public Lands: For nearly twenty five years, BKBH attorneys have routinely dealt with many of the federal and state laws governing “public lands”, including the rules and doctrines governing disposition, allocation, and protection of this land and the natural resources contained within those lands. Public lands issues constitute a large part of the business of real estate in Montana. The State of Montana, along with many western states in the Rocky Mountain region of the USA, is dramatically impacted by the presence of public lands. Nearly one-third of Montana’s landmass of 93 million acres is composed of a crazy quilt of public lands. The State of Montana owns nearly 5 million acres of land, and the balance of public lands, which exceeds 25 million acres, is owned or managed by nearly a dozen federal agencies, including the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service and a number of other federal agencies. BKBH’s real estate attorneys routinely deal with legal questions affected by such matters as the history of public land law, the constitutional authority to regulate federal lands, and the relevant legal authorities enacted by Congress and the States to do the same.

Subdivisions: In addition to its “public lands” transactional successes, BKBH routinely assists landowners with obtaining subdivision approval after initial applications have been denied. BKBH possesses the proven ability to assist a client, be they a seller or buyer, in the sale or acquisition of raw, undeveloped land, and then shepherd them through the state and local regulatory maze to achieve their development goal. This ability is the core service of any law firm’s land-use transactional practice.

Private Property: BKBH’s real estate practice is wide ranging, including the traditional real estate matters dealing with land purchases, sales and leasing transactions. Smaller organizations or individuals interested in real estate transactions constitute a substantial part of our practice. BKBH has assisted clients with the following types of real estate matters:

• Transactions including easements, leases, property valuations, title transfers, boundary adjustments, deeds of trust and water rights;
• Property and tax disputes involving real estate litigation, contractual assessments, and possible environmental contamination; and
• Industrial and environmental concerns regarding former property owners.

Public Housing/Affordable Housing:

In recent years BKBH has developed additional real estate competencies in the representation of public housing authorities. Our efforts in these matters have addressed a wide array of issues spanning public housing assistance eligibility, tenant rules compliance, notice and unit inspection, toxic substance assessment and remediation, unit abandonment, personal property abandonment, trespass and visitor conduct, tenant complaints and grievance procedures, alleged housing discrimination, due process, lease agreement interpretation and termination, eviction and collections, real estate development and tax credit development, local government cooperation agreements/payments in lieu of taxes and property management issues. BKBH has obtained HUD approval for addressing retroactive balance issues and conditional approval for prospective changes to a PILOT cooperative agreement.

Nearly every facet of our current representation of HHA touches on or flows directly from some level of federal housing law oversight. Anytime BKBH has been called upon to assess a tenant complaint or termination issue, underlying federal housing law is implicated. Specific examples of substantive work performed by BKBH for HHA in federal housing law and rules include federal procurement law, HUD oversight of litigation procurement, tenant eligibility issues, board member conflict of interest and alleged misconduct and annual financial audit issues.

BKBH has provided substantive real estate development and construction procurement related advice to its public housing client. Our attorneys have negotiated the terms of a developer agreement which contemplates redevelopment of a primary main housing campus consisting of 132 apartments and development of an adjacent parcel.

Litigation: A significant part of BKBH’s practice over the years has been in the representation of Montana’s largest private landowners, the railroads and other investor owned utilities. These companies own millions of acres of lands that are used every day for the transportation of commodities and energy. BKBH attorneys are regularly called upon to assist these companies on a wide array of real estate issues, ranging from litigating condemnation actions to drafting, filing and litigating private easements.

Sub-Practice Areas:

• Agricultural Law
• Construction Law
• Land Use & Zoning
• Property Law
• Water Law

Representative Matters:

• BKBH attorneys successfully represented cabin-owners in enacting federal legislation that enabled them to purchase their federally owned cabin sites in two of the largest man-made lakes in the world. The sales proceeds from the lake cabin are required to be deposited into a public trust fund, the earnings from which are available to acquire private lands for public use.
• BKBH has provided substantive real estate development and construction procurement related advice to its public housing client. Our attorneys have negotiated the terms of a developer agreement which contemplates redevelopment of a primary main housing campus consisting of 132 apartments and development of an adjacent parcel.
• A significant part of BKBH’s practice over the years has been in the representation of Montana’s largest private landowners, the railroads and other investor owned utilities. These companies own millions of acres of lands that are used every day for the transportation of commodities and energy. BKBH attorneys are regularly called upon to assist these companies on a wide array of real estate issues, ranging from litigating condemnation actions to drafting, filing and litigating private easements.
• BKBH attorneys pursued a quiet title and trespass action against defendants who had been crossing Plaintiffs’ property to access property along the Dearborn River. Defendants claimed access over Plaintiffs’ property based on express easement and prescriptive easement. The case settled.