3 ms·

they're simply registered when it becomes necessary. How can you prove it's yours? or if someone challenges it, you register it? This is weird, especially in

they're simply registered when it becomes necessary. How can you prove it's yours? or if someone challenges it, you register it? This is weird, especially in a country with 1000+ years legal tradition. One would assume that everything is registered, with the state owning the rest that is not assigned to private parties. In many third world countries it's common for people to work /live on the land that "everyone" knows it's theirs--via family line--but can't prove /register it legally (whatever the law is.)

pjc50 9y ago
It is basically broken, yes, and we should have a proper cadasteral mapping system that makes it straightforward to determine the ownership of a piece of land, combined with actual land-based taxation rather than the odd patchwork of "rates". There are some excellent books by Hernando de Soto on the subject of trying to turn informal claims of inherited land in the third world into proper usable claims.
pmyteh 9y ago
> How can you prove it's yours? or if someone challenges it, you register it? For an unregistered plot, in theory you demonstrate ownership by providing a series of valid conveyancing deeds back to a valid original grant. If they're lost, flawed, or destroyed in a fire, things can get messy. The Land Registry's guide to handling first registration in situations where the deeds are missing is a good example: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/first-registration-of-title-where-deeds-have-been-lost-or-destroyed/practice-guide-2-first-registration-of-title-if-deeds-are-lost-or-destroyed https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/first-registratio... In practice, if you've occupied the land continuously for a long period of time then you can have possessory rights in the land even in the absence of a good chain of title. You're right that this is all pretty unsatisfactory, which is why the Land Registry was set up in 1925 and registration made increasingly-more-compulsory since then. But as pjc50 notes, we don't have a full cadastre, so we are where we are. Interestingly Scotland had a registration system (of conveyances rather than of land per se) much earlier. So even within the UK we're not without precedents.
- mcguire 9y ago
  "If they're lost, flawed, or destroyed in a fire, things can get messy." This was a reasonably common occurrence in the American west. In particular, I believe that's how most of the possessors of Spanish land grants in New Mexico were dispossessed.

pjc50 9y ago

It is basically broken, yes, and we should have a proper cadasteral mapping system that makes it straightforward to determine the ownership of a piece of land, combined with actual land-based taxation rather than the odd patchwork of "rates". There are some excellent books by Hernando de Soto on the subject of trying to turn informal claims of inherited land in the third world into proper usable claims.

pmyteh 9y ago

> How can you prove it's yours? or if someone challenges it, you register it? For an unregistered plot, in theory you demonstrate ownership by providing a series of valid conveyancing deeds back to a valid original grant. If they're lost, flawed, or destroyed in a fire, things can get messy. The Land Registry's guide to handling first registration in situations where the deeds are missing is a good example: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/first-registration-of-title-where-deeds-have-been-lost-or-destroyed/practice-guide-2-first-registration-of-title-if-deeds-are-lost-or-destroyed https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/first-registratio... In practice, if you've occupied the land continuously for a long period of time then you can have possessory rights in the land even in the absence of a good chain of title. You're right that this is all pretty unsatisfactory, which is why the Land Registry was set up in 1925 and registration made increasingly-more-compulsory since then. But as pjc50 notes, we don't have a full cadastre, so we are where we are. Interestingly Scotland had a registration system (of conveyances rather than of land per se) much earlier. So even within the UK we're not without precedents.

mcguire 9y ago
"If they're lost, flawed, or destroyed in a fire, things can get messy." This was a reasonably common occurrence in the American west. In particular, I believe that's how most of the possessors of Spanish land grants in New Mexico were dispossessed.