Records review
The documentary history of the site and everything around it.
- Federal, state and local database search
- Historical aerials and topographic maps
- Fire insurance maps and city directories
- Adjoining and nearby property review
Home/Environmental consulting
Transaction due diligence for commercial acquisitions and refinancing — records review, site reconnaissance and a lender-ready report, delivered against your closing date.
A Phase I Environmental Site Assessment is the standard environmental review performed before a commercial property changes hands. Its purpose is to identify recognized environmental conditions — evidence of a release, or a material threat of one — so a buyer knows what they're acquiring and a lender knows what it's securing.
Almost every commercial lender requires one before funding. It also matters for liability: completing an assessment consistent with the applicable standard is part of establishing the innocent landowner and bona fide prospective purchaser defenses under federal law. Skipping it to save time on a deal is how a buyer inherits somebody else's contamination.
Assessments are performed to the current ASTM E1527 standard practice, which the EPA recognizes for satisfying All Appropriate Inquiries.
What's included
Four components, one report, written to be read by a lender's credit committee.
The documentary history of the site and everything around it.
A walk of the property looking for what records don't show.
Often where the useful detail actually comes from.
Findings, opinion and conclusions, with the documentation behind them.
Because the report lands in the middle of a live deal.
A clear path forward rather than an alarming paragraph.
Every other service on this site runs on a maintenance schedule. This one runs on a closing date, and that changes how it should be managed. Database searches and records retrieval take as long as they take, site access has to be arranged with a seller who may not be motivated, and a report delivered the day after funding is worth nothing.
Tell us the closing date in your first message. If it's not achievable we'll say so immediately rather than accepting the engagement and delivering late.
This work sits apart from our property maintenance business. The buyer here is usually an acquisitions team, a lender or a real estate attorney rather than a property manager, and the engagement is a defined deliverable rather than a recurring agreement.
Common questions
Commonly two to three weeks from engagement to final report, driven mostly by records turnaround and site access. Faster is sometimes possible; tell us the date and we'll tell you honestly whether we can hold it.
A Phase I is non-intrusive — records, a site walk and interviews. Nothing is sampled. If it identifies a recognized environmental condition, a Phase II is the follow-up that actually collects and analyzes soil, groundwater or vapor samples to determine whether contamination is present and to what extent.
Most Phase I assessments do not lead to a Phase II.
Under the All Appropriate Inquiries framework a report generally has a limited shelf life, and certain components must be updated if the assessment is older than a set period before closing. If you're working from an existing report, send it over and we'll tell you whether it can be updated or needs to be redone.
Yes. Tell us at engagement who needs reliance — lender, buying entity, counsel — and we'll issue reliance letters accordingly. It's easier arranged up front than after the report is issued.
Yes. Property type changes what the assessment focuses on — a former dry cleaner or fueling site carries very different concerns from a garden-style apartment community — but the standard and process are the same.
It depends on site size, property type, historical use and how much records work is involved. Send the address and the closing date and we'll come back with a fixed-fee proposal rather than an hourly estimate.
Get started
We'll come back with a fixed-fee proposal and a delivery date, or tell you straight away if the timeline doesn't work.