What legal and logistical mistakes cost real estate developers the most? That’s what I wanted to know from veteran real estate lawyer Lauren Lofton. In our chat, she revealed that developers often fail to narrow the scope of their lawyer’s work, occasionally try to negotiate on legal issues they haven’t researched to fully understand, and (costliest of all) sometimes lose interest in a current project for the sake of a future project.

Lofton is special counsel at Foley & Lardner and has an impressive command of real estate law anecdotes. In addition to our primary chat, I took the opportunity to pick her brain about one of my longstanding legal soapboxes: the debate between purchase contracts and options (and the superiority, in my opinion, of options). I didn’t want to distract from our primary chat and so edited that part out, but in case you want to get an earful of my soapbox and Lauren’s response, be sure to check out that short breakout conversation here. Hope you enjoy this discussion of real estate law as much as I did!