Congratulations and best wishes to these IndyBar members on their career moves and accomplishments! Have something to share? Email Julie Armstrong to be featured.

 
Taft welcomes Elizabeth Little as an attorney in the firm's Bankruptcy and Restructuring group in the Indianapolis office. She provides integrated and strategic legal counsel on financial matters, including complex financial transactions, corporate debt restructurings, related litigation matters, and commercial contracts.

 
Chad Oswald has joined Dentons in Indianapolis as of counsel. A member of Dentons’ Commercial Litigation practice, Chad focuses his practice on fiduciary, commercial and real estate disputes. He also represents small businesses, shareholders, closely held business members and large corporations in complex commercial litigation.
 

ChatGPT is all anyone can seem to talk about these days, from grandmas to grade schoolers.  That is how you know when a technology has captured the popular zeitgeist. Now, if you haven’t used it yet, or are unfamiliar with it, ChatGPT is what is called a ‘generative AI’ tool, that is rendered in the form of a chatbot.

The nomination period has begun for the 2024 Boards of Directors for the Indianapolis Bar Association AND the Indianapolis Bar Foundation. There are also opportunities for service with the Association's Section and Division Executive Committees.  Volunteering with IndyBar is an invaluable opportunity to play a role in the future of our legal community.

The IndyBar Real Estate and Land Use Section is happy to honor both the Honorable Mike Keele and Tom Dinwiddie as the 2022 recipients of the Zeff Weiss Award for Excellence in Real Estate. Read here to learn more about our esteemed award recipients. 

The City of Indianapolis, Department of Metropolitan Development (“DMD”) announced in late September that it will move to a new online petition filing process effective October 3, 2022. In announcing the new online process, DMD provided the information in this blog post.

Redlining is the process of segregating neighborhoods either through explicit racial covenants or the refusal by financial institutions to grant loans, mortgages or insurance to minority borrowers or investing in predominantly minority neighborhoods, per WFYI News.  This practice has created generational obstacles to owning property and investing in many minority neighborhoods.  The effects can still be seen in Indianapolis today.  Earlier this year, a report from the Fair Housing Center of Central Indiana found that Black homeownership in Marion County has declined by 20% over the past decade.  One reason being that Black applicants are denied home loans at a higher rate than white applicants, regardless of credit profile.

Please find a contact sheet for Real Estate & Land Use contacts at the City of Indianapolis here. The hope is that this sheet will be updated and distributed annually. Please let me know if you know if there is a specific contact or department/agency that you would like to see included.

With the recent increase by the Federal Reserve this week, I found the following article from CBRE informative as a "forecast" on potential impacts to the commercial real estate market. In particular, I thought the following opinions/predictions were noteworthy.

Get to know Real Estate & Land Use Section member Drew Strobel!

A new trend has arisen in the single-family homes industry – the build-to-rent approach. While builders have been flirting with this concept for a while, it may continue to grow in popularity as interest rates continue to rise and home buying becomes more difficult. The concept is that a builder develops and builds out a single-family subdivision like its typical business, but instead of selling homes individually, it maintains ownership in one entity and each home is available for rent.