Working Title (Insurance)
bitsaboutmoney.com
Working Title (Insurance)
1–10 of 99 posts
Re: Working Title (Insurance)
#2A surprising law foundation in the US is that if you live somewhere long enough as if you were the owner, then it becomes yours. Sometimes known as "squatters rights". This feels a bit unfair at first.
However, this "if you think you own it, you probably do own it" has turned out fairly well. At least in most places in the US, unlike England, you don't have to trace all property transfers back to Norman Conquest in 1066 in order to know who owns land. Anyone who holds it long enough resets the baseline date at which you need to trace it back to.
Re: Working Title (Insurance)
#3> [Generally the US local authority] does not record ownership but rather records certain private transactions. Current ownership is not an independent fact; current ownership is the sum of all compounding transactions since time not-quite-immemorial.
Event Sourcing with no snapshots.
Re: Working Title (Insurance)
#4A surprising law foundation in the US is that if you live somewhere long enough as if you were the owner, then it becomes yours. Sometimes known as "squatters rights". This feels a bit unfair at first. However, this "if you think you own it, you probably do own it" has turned out fairly well. At least in most places in the US, unlike England, you don't have to trace all property transfers back to Norman Conquest in 1…
As a practical matter I think this mostly confuses adverse tenancy with adverse possession. The latter case, of squatters gaining full legal title to a piece of property, is extraordinarily rare, and as I understand it the cases all tend to be marginal (like: abutments of adjacent rural properties changing hands). Adverse tenancy is somewhat more common: you can establish through your actions an expectation that you're a legitimate tenant, and it can be legally obnoxious to remove a tenant.
The cases Patrick describes in this piece aren't really about adverse possession, but rather about property sales where the seller (or the seller's seller, etc) doesn't have the full legal authority to sell in the first place, and the people who do show up later to contest the sale.
Re: Working Title (Insurance)
#5A surprising law foundation in the US is that if you live somewhere long enough as if you were the owner, then it becomes yours. Sometimes known as "squatters rights". This feels a bit unfair at first. However, this "if you think you own it, you probably do own it" has turned out fairly well. At least in most places in the US, unlike England, you don't have to trace all property transfers back to Norman Conquest in 1…
> unlike England
We have the same thing in England though.
Re: Working Title (Insurance)
#6I always thought of title insurance as a complete farce. However, I did end up with a scenario where title insurance paid out (to me) to the tune of several thousand dollars when I was sued by a neighbor.
The neighbor accused me of infringing on her property. I, in turn, proved (enough to the title insurance company, anyway) that the neighbor had also infringed on my property, and had done so in an invisible way (underground) since before I purchased the property. Since that infringement was not disclosed to me when I closed on the property, the title insurance company agreed to compensate me for that infringement to save the expenses of litigation.
At the end of the day, I ended up net positive to my own pocket as a result of their litigation. Unfortunately, a lot of lawyers made a lot of money in the process and everything (insurance, etc) ends up being more expensive as a result of crap like this.
Re: Working Title (Insurance)
#7Title insurance also covers (sometimes long standing) errors in the survey of the property boundary. This can be somewhat expensive to say, move your driveway off someone else’s property.
Re: Working Title (Insurance)
#8A surprising law foundation in the US is that if you live somewhere long enough as if you were the owner, then it becomes yours. Sometimes known as "squatters rights". This feels a bit unfair at first. However, this "if you think you own it, you probably do own it" has turned out fairly well. At least in most places in the US, unlike England, you don't have to trace all property transfers back to Norman Conquest in 1…
As a practical matter I think this mostly confuses adverse tenancy with adverse possession. The latter case, of squatters gaining full legal title to a piece of property, is extraordinarily rare, and as I understand it the cases all tend to be marginal (like: abutments of adjacent rural properties changing hands). Adverse tenancy is somewhat more common: you can establish through your actions an expectation that you'…
Yes, I think what most people think of when they think of "squatters" in the US is a much different dispute over tenancy, not title. Most (all?) places in the US it is possible to be a legitimate tenant without any lease agreement, although I've found many people aren't aware of this. The term "squatter" is used for a broad spectrum of issues of tenancy, many of which aren't at all clear-cut. The current popular take on the issue might be that it's some kind of loophole or problem with the law which should be summarily handled, but the root of the issue is simply that cops aren't courts that can't perform complicated eviction proceedings, even if one party claims that the issue is simple (because it might not be).
Re: Working Title (Insurance)
#9My real introduction to Title Insurance came not when I purchased my first house, but as I sold it. The buyer was an experienced builder who was buying the house (in a fairly desirable area of the city where property was appreciating quickly) in order to add upgrades and flip it.
When his agent asked why he had crossed out the line for title insurance, he retorted, "that property's been sold three times in 10 years. The title's clean."
I guess there was still some residual risk, but he had a point.
Re: Working Title (Insurance)
#10A surprising law foundation in the US is that if you live somewhere long enough as if you were the owner, then it becomes yours. Sometimes known as "squatters rights". This feels a bit unfair at first. However, this "if you think you own it, you probably do own it" has turned out fairly well. At least in most places in the US, unlike England, you don't have to trace all property transfers back to Norman Conquest in 1…
No, England has a new system, as of 2002. Property ownership records have been centralized, under "HM Land Registry", which has more authority than it used to have.
Those records are now treated as definitive. If a fraudster can get a record changed in HM Land Registry, they own the property. The fraudster can only be sued for damages.[1] The fraudster has probably sold the property to an innocent party. That innocent party now has good title to the property, and the original owner is out.
People have gone on vacation and had their houses stolen.
[1] https://www.getagent.co.uk/blog/properties/house-sold-withou...