How to manage complex transactions
We often use simple examples to demonstrate the many things Landscape can do, but we know that land protection is not always straightforward. Here are some of the most common scenarios we see that involve complex transactions or extraordinary circumstances, and how to track them in Landscape.
Unrestricted Land Tied to Easement
The general rule to keep in mind is that in Landscape, one property record = one interest, and that interest can't (or shouldn't) change over time.
Buy-Protect-Sell
The scenario: An organization first acquires a property in fee, places an easement on the property, then sells the protected property.
The solution: Two property records + one group record
- Property 1 is the Fee holding. The status of this record will be 'Current Holding' until you sell it. After the sale, change the status of this record to 'Disposed' and set the 'Current Size' to 0 to avoid double-counting in the Group record (the 'Conservation Size' may remain the same).
- Property 2 is the Conservation Easement holding. The status of this record becomes 'Current Holding,' and is a Stewardship Site if you maintain the annual monitoring obligation.
- Group is where you will show the Relationship between Property 1 and Property 2.
Protect-Buy-Sell
The scenario: A land trust first holds a conservation easement on a property, then acquires the property in fee and hands off the easement to another organization.
The solution: Two property records + one group record
- Property 1 is the Conservation Easement holding. The status of this record will be 'Current Holding' until you transfer ownership of the easement. After the transfer, change the status of this record to 'Disposed' and set the 'Current Size' to 0 to avoid double-counting in the Group record.
- Property 2 is the Fee holding. The status of this record becomes 'Current Holding,' and may be a Stewardship Site if you maintain the annual monitoring obligation or reporting requirement.
- Group is where you will show the Relationship between Property 1 and Property 2.
Unrestricted Land Tied to Easement
The scenario: A conservation easement you hold allows for unrestricted development on a part of the protected property, and you want to count that acreage separately from the fully protected acres.
The solutions:
Option 1 — Let the fully protected acres be the acres of record, and create a Human Use work item for the unrestricted area. A Human Use item has its own map layer and distinct fields to track information about the area such as Type, Category, Status, and Size.
Option 2 — Use two parcel records to distinguish between the fully protected area and the unrestricted area, then link both of those parcel records to a parent property record through a Relationship. The parent record sums the total acreage of the child parcels, but allows them to be maintained and counted separately when necessary. Read more about record types and relationships here: Properties, Parcels, and Groups.
Option 3 — Decide how your organization wants to define and utilize the 'Current Acres' and 'Conservation Acres' fields. 'Current Acres' is designed to capture the current size of the entire property, while 'Conservation Acres' is designed to capture the number of protected acres. Used consistently in the scenario above, subtracting the Conservation Acres from the Current Acres would result in the count of Unrestricted Acres. Read more here: Counting Acres in Landscape (Advanced Counting).