Real Estate Expert Witness in Tennessee

The reason counsel retains me is the combination. I am a Tennessee-licensed lawyer who is also an active managing broker, a TREC course instructor, a Rule 31 mediator, and a property-management operator across two decades of commercial real estate — beginning in employee roles before my 2012 agent license. Most real-estate experts come from one of those tracks, not all of them. That matters because these cases rarely turn on pure law or pure brokerage; they turn on the seam between them — how the licensee was supposed to behave, what the documents should have said, and what a competent operator actually does in the field. The opinions reflect a working attorney-and-broker view, not retired or theoretical analysis.

The cases come in a few shapes. Title and chain-of-title disputes — deed errors, missing instruments, conveyance defects. Real-estate contract litigation — purchase agreements, options, lease-to-own, contingency fights. Broker and agent standard-of-care matters — TREC rule application, supervision, commission disputes. Property-valuation context for damages, divorce, and partition. And disclosure or nondisclosure claims under the Tennessee Residential Property Condition Disclosure Act. Some need a designated expert with a written Rule 26 report; others are better served by earlier consulting that helps you decide whether the theory is supportable before designation. Both are available, and the pre-designation work stays confidential under work product.

I scope every engagement at the front — the complaint, the brokerage or transaction file, and a short call to confirm scope — and from there the report, deposition, and testimony follow as the matter needs, billed hourly against a case-sized retainer rather than a flat rate sheet. CV and prior-testimony list go out on request. One thing I hold to: the opinions stay limited to what the record supports and what industry custom actually establishes. I am not interested in advocacy dressed up as analysis — that is how an expert gets taken apart, and it does not help the client.