All Forum Posts by: Gregory Wilson

"Cincinnati area" can mean many things. I think all would agree that the City of Cincinnati is utterly different in approach to other building authorities in the Metropolitan area. Working with the City of Cincinnati is a finely tuned skill. If you are in the City of Cincinnati, go to the historic conservation board and download some presentation packets for past projects like yours (worth the time it will take to go through them) and see which firms are doing them.
Here is the site where you can look at other developers packets:

https://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/planning/historic-conservation...

In general, leases have a local flavor. What is standard in Cincinnati Ohio may be a deal breaker in Chicago.

The documentation is mostly in the public domain meaning that you can copy it and use it to make money without violating a copyright. Even so I have never heard of any landlord suing another landlord over using his lease document(s). Worst case, load it into Gemini or ChatGPT and ask them to rewrite it so as not to violate copyrights. You won't believe how effective that is.

Accordingly, it makes sense to get the documentation that the largest most successful landlord is using in your property location and follow in his footsteps by capturing his language and process.

An application, approval/denial letter, lease, checklist, termination and security deposit notice, will cost many thousands of dollars from a lawyer if he drafts it from scratch for you and, for example, if he is not located in Cincinnati he probably will not be familiar with the ordinance requiring deposit alternatives or providing tenants copies of the ordinances and statutes the City requires.  But, the competition will have all this.