# Recognized environmental condition (REC)

What a [Phase I](https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/phase-i-environmental) actually reports: a sign contamination may be present.

The report is not the finding. A Phase I either comes back clean or names one or more of these, and everything a buyer does next hangs off which. It may be a Phase II to put a number on it, an indemnity from the seller, a holdback against the price, or a walk. The clock matters as much as the finding. The federal all-appropriate-inquiries rule that earns a buyer the landowner defense puts an age limit on the report, so a study the seller commissioned well before the process started can be worth nothing to the person closing. Ask for the report itself and the date it was signed, and read what it says about the neighbors: contamination arrives by groundwater and does not respect a property line.

In numbers: A $100,000 escrow against a $4M price is 2.5% of it, held back until a Phase II puts a number on the one unresolved condition.

Source: https://searchspheresource.com/glossary/recognized-environmental-condition
Not dated: A definition is editorial: what a term means, why it matters, and an example. None of it reads a source that can go stale, so there is no date to take and a stamped one would be the build time wearing a costume.

Site index for machines: https://searchspheresource.com/llms.txt