AIA Contracts

[Timothy W.]

Jason did a great blog on contracts: http://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2010/02/17/whats-in-a-contract-contractors-rehabbing-real-estate/

Wanted to pass one tip along. He mentioned new investors who can't afford to have contracts written from the ground up for rehab projects. If you can't afford to have an attorney write a contract from the ground up, an option is to buy a pre-made contract from the American Institute of Architects: http://www.aia.org/contractdocs/index.htm

I had to do a couple 200k+ projects on these AIA contracts back when I did remodeling with my dad - in every case we used these, it was on recommendation from an attorney and I never ran across an attorney that saw any need to modify an AIA contract. IF you are ever in court and need to draw upon this contract, it has the AIA's name behind it - which is kind of like the Vatican of the construction industry.

[John Harvey]

Good point Tim.
The AIA contracts are pretty much the gold standard in the construction industry. They cover the Owner/Contractor agreement, Owner/Architect agreement, JV and Design Build agreements and many many more legal arrangements. They've been around for years and have been tested.