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> The Crown Estate Commissioners have done this under the terms of the Land Registration Act 2002, which allows the Crown to register an interest in otherwise u

> The Crown Estate Commissioners have done this under the terms of the Land Registration Act 2002, which allows the Crown to register an interest in otherwise unregistered land. This is wild to me. What do you mean "unregistered land" ? How the hell can you have been a nation for centuries and still have land that no-one owns? How can you be uncertain about who owns a piece of land? How can you have disputes? Every single square centimetre of Sweden is mapped, surveyed, registered, and owned. There exists one national, public database of who owns what, which means that for every single square centimetre, I can ask who owns it and get a definitive answer. No uncertainties. No secrets. No confusion.

zinekeller 4y ago
In general, that's called the Torrens titles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrens_title https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrens_title) after the MP of South Australia (which is now an Australian state) which implemented it. It's actually not that common, to highlight this in the US only Guam (which was then part of the Captaincy General of the Philippines) is the only US territory or state fully implementing Torrens titles, with some states partially implementing it and some (like the area in and around Chicago and the state of California) repealing it. Edit: I need to clarify that some states/countries have non-Torrens land registries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_registration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_registration) or deeds registries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deeds_registration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deeds_registration) but they only record what allegedly happened and ownership can be challenged in court, so these registries are not a guarantee of ownership (unlike in Torrens titles where the titles are indefeasible and the only possible lawsuits are about the circumstances of the transfer like if the original owner was defrauded).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bombcar 4y ago
Sweden is mapped that way because at some point they decided to do so, and any "unregistered land" became something - likely property of the Swedish government. The UK has a much more ... involved understanding of land, and since it only has to be registered when sold (IIRC) there are large plats of land where the owner is not registered (even though it may be known).
- permo-w 4y ago
  a quite fascinating quirk of UK land law is that squatters have a very impressive set of rights. If you squat on a piece of land for a long enough period of time without challenge, you can legally claim that land and take it into your ownership
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Hedepig 4y ago
    Double checked this and it's still correct, after a period of time a squatter can claim ownership if they can prove they've been living in the property. They can also get fined and/or sent to prison. Edit: it's also legal to squat in a non-residential building
    - Silhouette 4y ago
      Double checked this and it's still correct, after a period of time a squatter can claim ownership if they can prove they've been living in the property. That's not quite the whole story. The rules around adverse possession were changed a while back so that even if someone has been using some property for a long time they can't just file a bit of paperwork and take the legal ownership away from the real owner. The real owner will be notified of the attempt and then has quite a long period of time to address the matter, for example by getting any unauthorised occupants removed instead. It's only if the owner doesn't take the required actions in time and the occupants then go through a second round of paperwork that the occupants can take over the title and even then there are still some other big conditions they have to satisfy first. (I am not a lawyer or property expert but I did have this explained to me at length by someone who was when I was considering buying a property and he had some concerns about the legal title.)
      - satori99 4y ago
        In Australia, this still happens. The man is the story below, discovered a house in Sydney whose occupant had died. He changed the locks with no-ones permission and started renting the property out to other people. He did this for 20 years before filing the paperwork to take ownership. Relatives of the the decease owner were contacted, and they tried to to fight him, but he won in court fairly convincingly -- And got himself a $1.5M house and 20 years of rent payments. https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/nsw/developer-wins-court-battle-to-become-owner-of-vacant-sydney-house-20181031-p50d4v.html https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/nsw/developer-wins...
esquivalience 4y ago
Unregistered doesn't mean unowned. It just means that the land registry, an official government register of ownership, doesn't have an entry (yet). The registration system was created in 1925 to replace the previous system of tracing ownership through a decentralised system of dusty old documents, but land normally only gets registered when it's sold or if the owner decides to register it.
Terry_Roll 4y ago
So the Govt doesnt always know who owns bits of land, there are companies who make it their business like this website to find out who owns what and they are used by supermarkets and other property related businesses for land bank purposes. One of the biggest databases of who owns what in this country belongs to a company not far from Swindon! If you are a landowner, one of the ways to reduce your tax bill is to work with your neighbouring landowners, so a trust owns the land and it "gifts" some land, like a field to another trust in return for services previously undertaken. The point being there is no monetary value exchange, ie its not taxable. The only people who know about the arrangement will be the two trusts and the accountancy firm(s), and it will be a big name accountancy firm most of the time. I legally purchased this data from one landowner who relied on an inferior IT company to wipe their computers before reselling them as secondhand, and I simply restored all their data which is how I found out about the above. Ironically the Queen is a neighbour! Other ways to reduce your tax bill is to say to the taxman, you have no money, but I have some antiques like a suit of armour or something historically of "national" interest I can offer as payment instead, HMRC will get the National Trust in to valuate it, HMRC say yes or no, and then on paper said antique is now owned by the National Trust. However the NT will say its best kept in its existing surroundings so keep hold of it for us, and we will pay you to look after it! You can spot some of these people because they have to open up their property at least one day a year to the public. It can be quite lucrative having the NT maintaining the upkeep of your family estate during lean times!
- henrikschroder 4y ago
  > So the Govt doesnt always know who owns bits of land This is completely bonkers to me. Isn't this the main purpose of government? Of a nation? How can you defend property rights without having some kind of authority that knows who owns a certain property? And from some kind of IT perspective, keeping a national computer database of property ownership is trivial, has been trivial for decades, and a paper-based database has been trivial for centuries? > One of the biggest databases of who owns what in this country belongs to a company not far from Swindon! And you're not nationalizing this because...?
  - 4y ago
exidy 4y ago
Well in fairness England was only unified in 927 CE and there are families who have been there longer than that.

zinekeller 4y ago

In general, that's called the Torrens titles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrens_title https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrens_title) after the MP of South Australia (which is now an Australian state) which implemented it. It's actually not that common, to highlight this in the US only Guam (which was then part of the Captaincy General of the Philippines) is the only US territory or state fully implementing Torrens titles, with some states partially implementing it and some (like the area in and around Chicago and the state of California) repealing it. Edit: I need to clarify that some states/countries have non-Torrens land registries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_registration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_registration) or deeds registries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deeds_registration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deeds_registration) but they only record what allegedly happened and ownership can be challenged in court, so these registries are not a guarantee of ownership (unlike in Torrens titles where the titles are indefeasible and the only possible lawsuits are about the circumstances of the transfer like if the original owner was defrauded).

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

bombcar 4y ago

Sweden is mapped that way because at some point they decided to do so, and any "unregistered land" became something - likely property of the Swedish government. The UK has a much more ... involved understanding of land, and since it only has to be registered when sold (IIRC) there are large plats of land where the owner is not registered (even though it may be known).

permo-w 4y ago
a quite fascinating quirk of UK land law is that squatters have a very impressive set of rights. If you squat on a piece of land for a long enough period of time without challenge, you can legally claim that land and take it into your ownership
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Hedepig 4y ago
  Double checked this and it's still correct, after a period of time a squatter can claim ownership if they can prove they've been living in the property. They can also get fined and/or sent to prison. Edit: it's also legal to squat in a non-residential building
  - Silhouette 4y ago
    Double checked this and it's still correct, after a period of time a squatter can claim ownership if they can prove they've been living in the property. That's not quite the whole story. The rules around adverse possession were changed a while back so that even if someone has been using some property for a long time they can't just file a bit of paperwork and take the legal ownership away from the real owner. The real owner will be notified of the attempt and then has quite a long period of time to address the matter, for example by getting any unauthorised occupants removed instead. It's only if the owner doesn't take the required actions in time and the occupants then go through a second round of paperwork that the occupants can take over the title and even then there are still some other big conditions they have to satisfy first. (I am not a lawyer or property expert but I did have this explained to me at length by someone who was when I was considering buying a property and he had some concerns about the legal title.)
    - satori99 4y ago
      In Australia, this still happens. The man is the story below, discovered a house in Sydney whose occupant had died. He changed the locks with no-ones permission and started renting the property out to other people. He did this for 20 years before filing the paperwork to take ownership. Relatives of the the decease owner were contacted, and they tried to to fight him, but he won in court fairly convincingly -- And got himself a $1.5M house and 20 years of rent payments. https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/nsw/developer-wins-court-battle-to-become-owner-of-vacant-sydney-house-20181031-p50d4v.html https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/nsw/developer-wins...

esquivalience 4y ago

Unregistered doesn't mean unowned. It just means that the land registry, an official government register of ownership, doesn't have an entry (yet). The registration system was created in 1925 to replace the previous system of tracing ownership through a decentralised system of dusty old documents, but land normally only gets registered when it's sold or if the owner decides to register it.

Terry_Roll 4y ago

So the Govt doesnt always know who owns bits of land, there are companies who make it their business like this website to find out who owns what and they are used by supermarkets and other property related businesses for land bank purposes. One of the biggest databases of who owns what in this country belongs to a company not far from Swindon! If you are a landowner, one of the ways to reduce your tax bill is to work with your neighbouring landowners, so a trust owns the land and it "gifts" some land, like a field to another trust in return for services previously undertaken. The point being there is no monetary value exchange, ie its not taxable. The only people who know about the arrangement will be the two trusts and the accountancy firm(s), and it will be a big name accountancy firm most of the time. I legally purchased this data from one landowner who relied on an inferior IT company to wipe their computers before reselling them as secondhand, and I simply restored all their data which is how I found out about the above. Ironically the Queen is a neighbour! Other ways to reduce your tax bill is to say to the taxman, you have no money, but I have some antiques like a suit of armour or something historically of "national" interest I can offer as payment instead, HMRC will get the National Trust in to valuate it, HMRC say yes or no, and then on paper said antique is now owned by the National Trust. However the NT will say its best kept in its existing surroundings so keep hold of it for us, and we will pay you to look after it! You can spot some of these people because they have to open up their property at least one day a year to the public. It can be quite lucrative having the NT maintaining the upkeep of your family estate during lean times!

henrikschroder 4y ago
> So the Govt doesnt always know who owns bits of land This is completely bonkers to me. Isn't this the main purpose of government? Of a nation? How can you defend property rights without having some kind of authority that knows who owns a certain property? And from some kind of IT perspective, keeping a national computer database of property ownership is trivial, has been trivial for decades, and a paper-based database has been trivial for centuries? > One of the biggest databases of who owns what in this country belongs to a company not far from Swindon! And you're not nationalizing this because...?
- 4y ago

exidy 4y ago

Well in fairness England was only unified in 927 CE and there are families who have been there longer than that.