When people see “right-of-way” as a service Steigerwaldt offers they may wonder what this means. We work to secure the necessary real estate and land rights needed to facilitate a wide variety of public and private infrastructure projects. The Steigerwaldt Right-of-Way team supports our clients in securing these necessary land rights to facilitate their infrastructure project (transmission line, gas line, highway projects, etc.). In addition to providing support on linear type projects as outlined above, we also work with renewable energy developers to secure land rights (easements and/or leases) on large tracts of land to facilitate the development of their projects.
The Steigerwaldt team provides turn-key real estate services to include routing and sighting through construction support and project close out. We also provide a full suite of real estate project forecasting and budgeting services. The complete real estate process can be very detailed and involved. A typical project begins with the team working as an integrated partner with the other functional project areas reviewing and analyzing multiple route or project options. The team will provide input and conduct research on how to minimize landowner impacts and permitting hurdles for each route. This process may also include providing support at public open house to help answer landowner questions and
concerns.
Once a final route is selected, the team will facilitate development of a landowner list and secure title reports. This process helps identify the fee owners affected by the project (and who we will eventually contact to secure land rights), and to provide ownership records to the survey group to begin project base mapping. While final routing and sighting coordination takes place between engineering, construction, and survey, our team will begin work on market analysis or appraisal coordination to develop an appropriate fee schedule for use when presenting offers. Concurrently, we may also reach out to the affected landowners to secure permissions for survey, environmental, and geotechnical work. This initial interaction can be critical to a successful acquisition and long-term relationship with project stakeholders. Our team takes great pride in being honest, open, fair, and empathetic during landowner negotiations, fully understanding we are representing our client and building the foundation for the long-term successful relationship between the landowner and the client.
As project design is finalized and the necessary land rights are determined, we then draft offers using the valuation approved during the market analysis/appraisal process. Offers are proofed and then delivered to landowners to begin negotiations. All offers are done in good faith and in accordance with all applicable statutes of the state we are working within. Understanding this process can be foreign to many landowners so we take the time to actively listen to the landowners, address their concerns, and negotiate in good faith. The key to successful negotiations in the landowner and we place a great emphasis on positive landowner relationships.
Following acquisition, our skilled and knowledgeable staff often provide construction liaison activities, serving as the intermediary between the landowner and local municipalities and the construction crew helping to negate or minimize any issues that may arise. Post construction, our team will settle any property damages that may have occurred and finally turn over all records to the client.
Upon completion of the project, our team completes file organization and close-out, which includes submission of all executed and recorded documents, landowner contact diaries, and all budgetary items and reports to the client.
To help facilitate this process, our team utilizes a web-based system to house all relevant landowner information and records. This system is integrated into a project specific ArcGIS platform to provide the project team a spatial view and real time access to all relevant real estate project information.
As described above, our team can provide the full suite of services typically needed for a real estate acquisition project, or any combination of the services described above. We pride ourselves in providing quality work fast with honesty and integrity and are proactive and solution driven when working with our clients and project stakeholders.
