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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 tim

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...
    - bombcar 4y ago
      It was more than 20 years since the last recorded owner: > Justice Darke said when the last owner Henry Thompson Downie died in 1947, he did not leave a will and no representative was appointed to the deceased estate. > A tenant was living in the property at the time, and she remained there for a further 51 years until she died in April 1998. Who was paying the property tax I wonder, and did the gov't even notice? I suppose that's the "council rates".
bombcar 4y ago
That also exists in the US (because our common law is descended from the UK's) - adverse possession aka "possession is 9/10ths of the law". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_possession https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_possession
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  It exists in some US jurisdictions but even where it does, it's often been sharply curtailed. IIRC, in California adverse possession exists, but to benefit you must not only be openly possessing the property but also paying the property taxes on it in the period required to establish the claim.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Yeah, the most common way for adverse possession to come into play is with boundary disputes - for example if you built part of your garage on your neighbor's land. It's also become less necessary as accurate accounting of land has become more common.
refurb 4y ago
That’s true in many places beyond the UK. The US has similar laws where if you meet the requirements of ownership and nobody contests it for X years, you can claim it.
- seoaeu 4y ago
  Adverse possession dates back to all the way to the Code of Hammurabi. Arguably, it is a necessary part of property ownership itself because otherwise you could never know whether you (or the person you bought it from) owned a specific piece of land at all. Someone could always come by with an old deed and say that it belonged to them.
  - refurb 4y ago
    Land title systems are really interesting. You are correct that under the deed system, proof is held by the owner through a link of subsequent deeds. Some countries still use this system. When I bought a house you could see ownership going all the way back to the establishment by the British Crown, then the provincial government, then the township, then the city, then the developer and then 5 different owners. All of that is captured and maintained as records (either by the owner exclusively or a land registry). Other's have moved to a central registry. Basically the registry owned by the government is the sole "source of truth" about land ownership. If ownership is not registered, then it's not recognized. If there are any errors (say a fraudulent purchase that actually get included in the system), it's covered through title insurance.
    - SenHeng 4y ago
      When I bought property in Tokyo, you could see all the times the previous owners made any changes the the old (splits and mergers) as well as how many mortgages have been taken out on it. I was quite surprised at how much private info was on it, and the record of it supposedly will last til the government falls or something I guess. Will archaeologists from the future stumble upon some filing cabinet and have a good laugh at my debts?

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...
  - bombcar 4y ago
    It was more than 20 years since the last recorded owner: > Justice Darke said when the last owner Henry Thompson Downie died in 1947, he did not leave a will and no representative was appointed to the deceased estate. > A tenant was living in the property at the time, and she remained there for a further 51 years until she died in April 1998. Who was paying the property tax I wonder, and did the gov't even notice? I suppose that's the "council rates".

bombcar 4y ago

That also exists in the US (because our common law is descended from the UK's) - adverse possession aka "possession is 9/10ths of the law". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_possession https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_possession

dragonwriter 4y ago
It exists in some US jurisdictions but even where it does, it's often been sharply curtailed. IIRC, in California adverse possession exists, but to benefit you must not only be openly possessing the property but also paying the property taxes on it in the period required to establish the claim.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Yeah, the most common way for adverse possession to come into play is with boundary disputes - for example if you built part of your garage on your neighbor's land. It's also become less necessary as accurate accounting of land has become more common.

refurb 4y ago

That’s true in many places beyond the UK. The US has similar laws where if you meet the requirements of ownership and nobody contests it for X years, you can claim it.

seoaeu 4y ago
Adverse possession dates back to all the way to the Code of Hammurabi. Arguably, it is a necessary part of property ownership itself because otherwise you could never know whether you (or the person you bought it from) owned a specific piece of land at all. Someone could always come by with an old deed and say that it belonged to them.
- refurb 4y ago
  Land title systems are really interesting. You are correct that under the deed system, proof is held by the owner through a link of subsequent deeds. Some countries still use this system. When I bought a house you could see ownership going all the way back to the establishment by the British Crown, then the provincial government, then the township, then the city, then the developer and then 5 different owners. All of that is captured and maintained as records (either by the owner exclusively or a land registry). Other's have moved to a central registry. Basically the registry owned by the government is the sole "source of truth" about land ownership. If ownership is not registered, then it's not recognized. If there are any errors (say a fraudulent purchase that actually get included in the system), it's covered through title insurance.
  - SenHeng 4y ago
    When I bought property in Tokyo, you could see all the times the previous owners made any changes the the old (splits and mergers) as well as how many mortgages have been taken out on it. I was quite surprised at how much private info was on it, and the record of it supposedly will last til the government falls or something I guess. Will archaeologists from the future stumble upon some filing cabinet and have a good laugh at my debts?