[HN Gopher] Who Owns England's Woods? (2020)
___________________________________________________________________
Who Owns England's Woods? (2020)
Author : rvieira
Score : 61 points
Date : 2021-03-25 22:49 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (whoownsengland.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (whoownsengland.org)
| globular-toast wrote:
| I didn't know pheasants were released each year for shooting. I
| assumed there was an established native population.
|
| I've been clay pigeon shooting and it was fun but I was quite
| disgusted by the amount of waste involved. The shotgun cartridges
| are not only plastic themselves but eject a piece of plastic
| wadding out the end of the gun littering the environment. You can
| get biodegradable wadding but it's not required everywhere and
| the plastic cartridges are cheaper. Together with the released
| pheasants this strikes me as quite a big environmental impact.
| tweetle_beetle wrote:
| I feel much the same way about hunting in general, but pheasant
| and grouse shooting seems especially pointless as it's so
| artificial and tangled up in fanciful class identities.
|
| The body which represents the industry put together a campaign
| to push the story that grouse shooting is good for the
| environment [1]. There's an interesting infographic with some
| disingenuous facts like "heather moorland is rarer than
| rainforest" (because it's a man-made landscape favoured by
| gentry in Britain), "reduced risk of wildfires by controlled
| burning" (removing all the tress and then burning heather that
| replaces it [2] tends to have that effect) and "up to 5 times
| more threatened wading birds" (sounds better than killing
| raptors with conservation status to keep the grouse population
| high).
|
| The strong rumour that the Conservative Prime Minister put in a
| special exemption to the coronavirus restrictions to allow Lord
| Bamford, one of his primary donors, to carry on shooting[2],
| (after his company declared 950 jobs at risk [4]) sums it up.
|
| [1] https://basc.org.uk/grouse/
|
| [2] https://www.greatbritishlife.co.uk/things-to-do/peak-
| distric...
|
| [3] https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/boris-johnson-rule-
| of...
|
| [4]
| https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/may/15/nearly-1500...
| clort wrote:
| On that 'killing raptors with conservation status to keep the
| grouse population high', see https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-
| scotland-tayside-central-5429503...
|
| A golden eagles satellite tag stopped broadcasting in the
| middle of a grouse moor in 2016. It was found last year,
| several miles distant washed up on a river bank, wrapped in a
| sheet of lead.
| panzagl wrote:
| If you think shotgun shells from pheasant hunting are a big
| environmental impact... well, enjoy the bucolic landscape you
| live in and don't ever go anywhere else, I guess.
| asdff wrote:
| A lot of lakes are similarly stocked with fish for fisherman.
| Sometimes they drop the fish out of planes into the lakes.
| dkarp wrote:
| Something that always seems wild to me in England is that there
| is no exact record of property boundaries. Specifically, in
| England and Wales there's usually no record of the exact boundary
| between two properties and who owns the hedge, wall, tree or
| fence between 2 properties[1].
|
| There are only "title plans" held by HM Land Registry, that may
| or may not include information about who owns the wall and
| exactly what delineates the property line. If you want to see the
| "title plan", you even have to pay a small fee each time for the
| privilege. I can't understand why they would do that except to
| slow the flow of information.
|
| I recently looked on US property websites and was surprised that
| the map showed the exact edge of the property as well as every
| other property around it. That just isn't possible in England. No
| such map seems to exist unless I've understood things
| incorrectly.
|
| 1: https://www.gov.uk/your-property-boundaries#legalboundaries
| tialaramex wrote:
| > I recently looked on US property websites and was surprised
| that the map showed the exact edge of the property as well as
| every other property around it
|
| The US does not have land registration. So, while it's nice
| that you got a web site with a map, that's worth almost nothing
| in court.
|
| In contrast the small fee to the Land Registry buys you
| paperwork that a court of law is compelled to accept as the
| last word on who owns that land.
|
| In the US if you're absolutely sure you own your plot, but alas
| somebody else has paperwork which they say proves they own it,
| you're looking at an expensive court case to find out who is
| right.
|
| Which is of course _why_ the US doesn 't have a land registry,
| the lawyers and insurers lobby to ensure they get to keep
| charging people for the peace of mind that they're not going to
| wake up to find somebody else owns their home.
| brianwawok wrote:
| And this is why most (all) sales in the US include both
| lender and buyer title insurance. So if some court case comes
| up, the bank / buyer are protected.
|
| 99.999% of sales nothing happens, and the title insurance
| company gets $800 for doing nothing.
|
| Quit the good gig if you ask me.
| dpierce9 wrote:
| Title insurance doesn't even necessarily cover property
| border disputes. It can but it depends and some title
| insurances exclude it.
| tim333 wrote:
| Probably kind of messy if one does go to court for being
| forged or some such though.
| ghaff wrote:
| I assume:
|
| 1.) There is some cost associated with doing the title
| search which is probably fairly manual
|
| 2.) When something does go wrong, it's expensive
|
| 3.) If it really were a license to print money, I would,
| perhaps naively, expect more competition to drive prices
| down
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > If it really were a license to print money, I would,
| perhaps naively, expect more competition to drive prices
| down
|
| I would think the boringness of working in title
| insurance suffices to restrict the supply.
| majormajor wrote:
| Yet the government knows who is the owner for tax-charging
| purposes.
|
| So why would that record not count?
| NordSteve wrote:
| The taxpayer and property owner can be different parties --
| for example, in the US, a commercial property that is
| rented to a tenant under a triple-net lease.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| I was under the impression that the records at the county
| recorder or assessor's office was definitive, excluding cases
| where the boundaries changed because of land usage and the
| like (ie, your neighbor built on your property and you
| ignored it, now he claims he owns it).
| mcguire wrote:
| In Texas, as I understand it, the deed is the definitive
| document and need not be recorded with the county. However,
| recording it is required by lenders and generally a good
| idea---in case of multiple deeds showing up, the recorded
| one would take precedence. One exception is that, if you
| wanted to leave your property to someone on your death
| without it going through the probate process, you could
| execute a deed and not register it. When you die, the
| receiver registers the deed and everyone is happy.
| cptskippy wrote:
| My brother tried to by a house last October and only just
| gave up this month after two different lawyers were unable to
| establish the man selling it was the owner. He'd lived there
| for 60+ years though and no one else is claiming ownership.
| jefftk wrote:
| This is incorrect: it varies by state. See
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrens_title#United_States
|
| (For example, in Massachusetts, where I live, you can look up
| any property on the Registry of Deeds:
| https://www.masslandrecords.com/)
| ghaff wrote:
| Didn't know things were online in Mass. (Although, at least
| in my case, they seem to have images of the deed text but
| not the parcel drawing.)
| dkarp wrote:
| I see, so my assumption was wrong. I've just gone on Zillow
| to investigate a little more and they don't state anywhere
| where their "lot lines" come from. However, it seems to vary
| by location.
|
| Some places don't seem to have any lot lines, others have
| some properties marked and others have every property clearly
| marked.
|
| I'd be interested to know where they get that data from. Is
| it some public source or a proprietary database? Do some
| states have a list and others not?
| emteycz wrote:
| If you want to see a real world example of freely
| available, exact and digital government land/building
| registry (including ownerships etc!), you can look at the
| Czech "Cadastre of Immovables": https://www.ikatastr.cz/
| (zoom to street level to see plots). It covers every
| centimeter of the country.
| ahi wrote:
| Most jurisdictions (county usually) have publicly available
| GIS databases. However, these are secondary to the recorder
| of deeds which will contain the legal description of
| boundaries. The deeds are more accurate, but less precise
| than the GIS boundaries indicate.
| User23 wrote:
| For those curious about how someone else might acquire that
| paperwork without provable fraud, one way is for someone who
| doesn't actually hold title to will it to that someone else.
| Obviously the dead person can't be convicted of fraud and the
| beneficiary can easily claim good faith. In some states
| adverse possession under color of title[1] like this has a
| significantly shorter period (7 years instead of 20 for some)
| before legal ownership can be claimed, presumably because
| it's assumed the squatter acted in good faith. I wouldn't be
| surprised if UK law is similar.
|
| [1] https://wealthhow.com/difference-between-color-of-title-
| clai...
| goodcanadian wrote:
| I am not an expert in any sense, but adverse possession
| definitely does come from England and originate in common
| law.
| dbatten wrote:
| Anecdotes from the US:
|
| 1) When I moved a couple of years ago, I discovered that the
| deed to our house had a typo. It defined the property we
| owned by referencing a map, which was on file with the County
| Register of Deeds. Except, when the deed cited the map, it
| mis-typed the page number the map was supposed to be on such
| that it referenced the map for a totally different property.
| The prior owner's deed had the same typo, back a couple of
| generations. The sale nearly fell through as the buyer's
| lawyer argued that it would be risky for them to buy the
| property given the typo and that a title insurance company
| might even refuse to insure the sale over the issue (not sure
| how much of that was real vs. theatrics). In the end, our
| lawyer tracked down an owner several generations prior in
| another part of the state, and sent a paralegal to his
| current house to have him sign new paperwork clearing the
| matter up.
|
| 2) A while back, I got a little too interested in the history
| of a local state park, which was a farming community before
| it was a park. I found some of the original deeds where the
| property was sold from the original farmers to the US Federal
| Government, and then to the State. The deeds defined the
| property by saying things like "beginning at a holly bush on
| the bank of Crabtree Creek, and extending for 500 yards north
| to a rock." A holly bush? Which holly bush? What about when
| it dies or somebody cuts it down? Which rock? The woods are
| full of rocks! In a world of Google Maps and GPS, it's wild
| to think that land used to be bought and sold this way, which
| apparently worked well enough for the time.
| btowngar wrote:
| GPS has its own shortcomings as well due to continental
| drift!
|
| "The Australian continent, perched on the planet's fastest
| moving tectonic plate, is drifting at about seven
| centimetres a year to the northeast."
|
| https://theconversation.com/australia-on-the-move-how-gps-
| ke...
| bluGill wrote:
| This is state by state. In Iowa (and only Iowa to my
| knowledge) the state does have land registration which is
| worth something in court. In Iowa when property changes hand
| the legal record changes in a way that is easy to verify and
| holds up in court. Attempts at fraud are rejected by the
| state because they can and do verify that the seller has
| legal right to the property. If someone else has paperwork
| saying they own your land not court fight is needed because
| the state holds the final word on paperwork. (even then I
| suppose you can get identify theft fraud to transfer
| ownership, but this is harder to pull off than writing up a
| fictional title)
|
| Even in states without the above, there are local records of
| ownership that you can bring to court that can be brought to
| court to prove who is right. Someone is going to be paying
| the land taxes and that is strong evidence of ownership in
| court. Banks require title insurance because the title
| insurance company will check the local records to verify that
| who you are buying from has rights to sell. However this will
| be an expensive court case as you say. Fortunately such
| things are rare these days.
|
| Iowa has their system because about the time they became a
| state there was a big problem with fraud where someone would
| sell fake titles to land to multiple people. So Iowa put in
| place a system to stop it. Other states started when such
| fraud was rare and didn't need it, or started after title
| insurance was invented to take care of the fraud problems.
|
| (Note, others have talked about squatters rights - I didn't
| touch on that, but it does exist in some cases)
| koenigdavidmj wrote:
| Torrens title? Or are you talking about a different system?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrens_title
| bluGill wrote:
| Good question, I do not know. Your wiki link doesn't list
| Iowa, but I don't know if it is because Iowa is somehow
| different, or if just they editors didn't know.
| mc32 wrote:
| Some towns provide parcel maps, often GIS maps, are those
| also unofficial?
| ahi wrote:
| As far as the courts are concerned, yes.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> If you want to see the "title plan", you even have to pay a
| small fee each time for the privilege. I can't understand why
| they would do that except to slow the flow of information._
|
| I suspect they're trying to thread the needle between "People's
| home addresses are private" and "Who owns what land is public"
|
| Right now (AFAIK) there isn't any public database I can search
| to find all the houses owned by Boris Johnson.
| clort wrote:
| If you are a conveyancing solicitor, you can subscribe to the
| land registry database and just search it like any other with
| no need to pay per search, as far as I know.
|
| The reason for the payment is that the Land Registry is
| required to be self funding. Actually I thought that they
| might have been incorporated as a private company already and
| sold off but not sure about that.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| I think The IRS does as Boris got hit with tax when his mum
| died and he got hit with US tax.
| rgblambda wrote:
| > If you want to see the "title plan", you even have to pay a
| small fee each time for the privilege. I can't understand why
| they would do that except to slow the flow of information.
|
| HM Land Registry is one of the few government agencies that
| turns a profit.
| est31 wrote:
| > There are only "title plans" held by HM Land Registry, that
| may or may not include information about who owns the wall and
| exactly what delineates the property line.
|
| Yeah the UK has been introducing a land registry, but as of
| 2019, 15% of the land was still not registered.
| https://hmlandregistry.blog.gov.uk/2019/05/30/registering-la...
|
| In continental europe, Napoleon can be attributed to many of
| the land registries, but England never got conquered by him :).
| arethuza wrote:
| It's the UK - nothing is that simple.
|
| HM Land Registry is for England and Wales, Scotland has its
| own land registry (indeed a completely separate legal system)
| and NI does its own thing as well.
| SllX wrote:
| > I can't understand why they would do that except to slow the
| flow of information.
|
| To cover costs. Accessing those records costs somebody's time
| and so unless HM Land Registry eats the cost, the interested
| party covers the cost. Same reason you pay for passes on
| government transportation or pay filing fees in court or for a
| driver's license.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| In Ontario Canada, we digitized the system and then sold it
| off to cover a deficit.
|
| You can still pay the legislated $6 or whatever for each
| individual search, but they can slice and dice it and charge
| whatever they like for useful access to data only they have.
|
| Now someone else can make a 10% return on equity at the
| public's expense instead of just issuing a bond at 3%.
|
| We like to sell off monopolies and maintain them here...
| chris1993 wrote:
| Australia has the same approach to selling off monopolies.
| Nice little earners.
| arethuza wrote:
| In Scotland if you build a property on someone else's land then
| _they_ own the property. They are under no obligation to inform
| you either - so if you decide to build a windmill on top of a
| hill and then afterwards discover that the hill actually
| belongs to someone else then you are out of luck!
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| I think it's a good system. It ensures you as the party that
| wants to build do your due diligence and/or make sure
| everyone is on board.
| arethuza wrote:
| It can cause a lot of grief if you're lawyer hasn't done
| _all_ the possible checks as to who owns the land and you
| find you have been living in a new house that actually
| belongs to someone else...
|
| And people wonder why conveyancing of houses is often so
| cheap!
|
| NB Of course, in such circumstances I'm sure you'd have a
| valid claim against your solicitor who did the conveyancing
| - but I doubt if that would make up for the misery
| involved.
| wil421 wrote:
| I have a survey from my county office that shows everything. It
| was done by the previous owner but the county retains records.
| It shows retaining walls, 3 different types of fences, and it
| includes the different types of property markers they found and
| where.
| pmyteh wrote:
| And worse - not all properties are even registered: there's no
| complete cadastral survey. It's now compulsory to register land
| on sale, but there are lots of pieces that haven't been sold in
| decades or centuries.
|
| This can result in some quite odd outcomes. The road outside my
| house, for example, isn't owned by the local council like most
| roads, but is 'unadopted'. It's probably owned by the
| descendents of the builder who laid out the road and built the
| houses in the 1840s, but as it would be a liability rather than
| an asset (and was probably forgotten about shortly after the
| last house was sold in any case) nobody knows who that is.
|
| There are ways around this. We have specialised title insurance
| to cover the risk that the road isn't actually a right of way,
| and there are provisions in English & Welsh law that give
| responsibility for road maintenance to the frontagers (like me)
| if the road owner isn't known. But it's added a surprising
| amount of friction. If there were a 'register or lose it'
| provision then it's likely something sane could be worked out
| once the land reverted to the crown. But as it is, we're in
| this weird semi-purgatory forever. No way of claiming adverse
| possession over a road, sadly...
| GavinMcG wrote:
| It's not adverse possession, but does your jurisdiction not
| recognize implied easements?
|
| Easements don't change ownership of the underlying land, they
| just establish a right to use/control the land in a
| particular way. Road access would (in many jurisdictions) be
| protected by an easement implied by necessarity (because
| access is a necessity) or an easement implied by past usage
| (analogous to adverse possession).
| pmyteh wrote:
| It does, and it's very likely that we'd eventually win in
| court if it became an issue. But AIUI, we'd need testimony
| to 20 years of _continuous_ access as of right to _our_
| house (not any of the others on the street). As a newcomer,
| that 's not entirely trivial - the people we bought it from
| were only here 8 years, and I think we'd need to go another
| two owners back to get the full 20. And in any case the
| court case (and inevitable buggeration in the lead up to
| it) would be expensive and unpleasant.
|
| Anyway, the building society (mortgage holder) wanted
| better security than that, so insurance it is.
| 7952 wrote:
| I wonder if aerial photos would show cars parked and help
| prove it.
| 7952 wrote:
| Most roads are actually not owned by the local authority.
| Adoption means tthey take over responsibility but the
| freehold remains with the original owner. Title plans are
| drawn to the assumed highway rather than the original
| ownership. The definitive information is most likely to be in
| conveyance documents.
| moonbug wrote:
| Always seemed odd to me that there's no way to compel a local
| authority to take ownership and responsibiltiy for an
| unadopted road.
| pmyteh wrote:
| AIUI they (often?) will take it over, but only after it's
| been made up to the same standard that a new road would
| need to be for them to adopt it. Which is quite the
| undertaking, especially when you need to persuade each
| individual frontager to cough up for the building works.
| fy20 wrote:
| Here in Lithuania it's the complete opposite, but given all
| ownership records are max 30 years old, it makes it a lot
| easier :-) A lot of GIS data is open to the public (no
| registration required) such as boundaries and utilities.
| There's even a mobile app.
|
| I am somewhat surprised how much data is open, it even shows
| you substations. If you wanted to sabotage the electricity
| supply for an area it would show you how to do it :-)
|
| https://regia.lt/map/regia2
|
| (Turn on different layers in the menu on mobile)
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Amazingly the HM Land Registry [0] doesn't actually identify
| the ownership of all land in the UK. Specifically, land only
| needs to be registered when it is sold or transferred in
| certain ways - which puts it on the system, as it were. But
| there is no legal compulsion to register land that doesn't meet
| these transfer criteria, and such land won't be returned in a
| public search of the Land registry, especially for land that
| was last transferred before 1990 [1] when the current
| registration triggers were defined.
|
| [Edit] Actually establishing who does own England is a somewhat
| challenging topic; see [2] for an example of one such attempt,
| and the list of sources that needed to be consulted.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HM_Land_Registry
|
| [1] https://www.gov.uk/registering-land-or-property-with-land-
| re...
|
| [2] https://map.whoownsengland.org/
| bennyp101 wrote:
| > If you want to see the "title plan", you even have to pay a
| small fee each time for the privilege
|
| You also get a copy when buying the house, as well as any
| covenants and details about any fences/walls etc that you have
| to maintain (either individually or with others)
|
| Usually it just gets passed down in the buyer/seller
| questionnaire - until someone has a falling out with the
| neighbour then it all goes horribly wrong!
|
| But yea, it is strange that we haven't started to do it more
| accurately, especially for new builds.
| yardie wrote:
| > it is strange that we haven't started to do it more
| accurately, especially for new builds.
|
| Last time the surveyor came out he found the buried property
| stacks, dropped his GPS tripod right on top, and that was the
| property line. This was a house built in the 80s. I'm
| guessing each county in each state has a method for marking
| and surveying property.
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| > Specifically, in England and Wales there's usually no record
| of the exact boundary between two properties
|
| I think that the logical explanation for this is that it just
| isn't important enough to record the exact boundary between two
| properties.
|
| In the US, most of the land was (dubiously) obtained by the
| government from the natives, divided into large tracts, sold to
| land speculators who then divided it into smaller tracts, who
| then sold it to individuals and families far, far away from the
| land. The owner then had to go find it. This system pretty much
| required exact boundaries be known from the start.
|
| In the modern US, most land boundaries aren't super important
| anymore. Want to build a shed in your backyard? Your local
| zoning rules probably say it has to be 10-15 feet away from the
| property boundary. If you build it 10-15 feet away from what
| you think is the property boundary, nobody is going to send in
| the surveyors to make sure and then tell you to move your shed
| 1.5 feet to the left.
|
| The situations in the US where the exact boundaries are needed
| are probably the same situations where the exact boundaries are
| needed in the UK.
| bluGill wrote:
| In the US we saw the beginnings of the problem of inexact
| boundaries in England, so we carefully surveyed most of the
| country after getting land from the natives (I won't touch
| that issue). In the far east cost things were not done well
| (nw to the old stump that rotted away 200 year ago...), but
| most of the rest of the country has land borders known to
| within a few cm.
|
| England land dates back to pre-history in some cases, so it
| isn't a surprise that it is hard to pin down where some
| boundaries are. It is also hard to fix this when two
| different owners disagree - someone will be screwed out of
| land they think they own (or given a fence they don't want to
| maintain)
| DanBC wrote:
| Property disputes cause huge amounts of distress and
| financial cost in England, partly because ownership of
| boundaries is unclear. Some people spend years and tens of
| thousands of pounds arguing over that 1 foot strip of land.
|
| For the other stuff we have "party wall" laws which help a
| bit.
|
| > Want to build a shed in your backyard? Your local zoning
| rules probably say it has to be 10-15 feet away from the
| property boundary.
|
| In England you can build a shed right up to the boundary.
| Potentially you can have bits (like guttering) that overhang
| the boundary. I think this site is a nice explanation of how
| complex it can get: https://www.lyonsdavidson.co.uk/can-
| homeowners-overhanging-e...
| panzagl wrote:
| In the US we also have right-of-ways granted to utilities,
| and while they usually work with you to avoid damage to
| structures and landscape, they don't have to. There may
| also be separate mineral rights (if I find gold ore on my
| property it doesn't belong to me) and water rights (I
| cannot legally collect the runoff from my roof in a
| barrel).
| ghaff wrote:
| Furthermore, things that are non-issues between amiable
| neighbors on large parcels of land can easily become
| expensive nuisances when it comes time to sell.
|
| For example, I have a dumpster that's probably sticking a
| couple feet into my neighbor's property. It's absolutely
| not a big deal, especially given that it's logically on "my
| land" given it's on my side of a driveway. But when the
| property was split up before I bought it, a survey line was
| drawn in an easy but not especially logical way. I'd never
| build a shed there because that would be an issue I'd have
| to deal with in the event of either property being sold.
| tim333 wrote:
| I suppose it's been technically hard to do - plans in the
| registry office aren't going to be accurate enough to
| distinguish a 1 ft strip. Maybe on a good aerial photo you
| could mark it? In Thailand they put concrete maker stakes
| in the ground with serial numbers on.
| 7952 wrote:
| And a lot of the boundary features predate accurate
| mapping. It could be a 500 year old ditch with a hedge
| planted on one side that is cut back every year. To draw
| a line hou would have to make an arbitrary decision that
| ignores the practicalities of hedges and ditches.
|
| Also being able to locate things to a global reference
| system is a very new thing. Before GPS everything had to
| be measured relative to something else on the ground.
| That was never perfectly accurate and could have absolute
| errors of a few metres.
| bluGill wrote:
| I have a metal stake at the corner of my property. It is
| possible for me to dig that stake up and move it. Thus
| there needs to be a record of where that stake should be
| so that if I do such a thing I can be caught.
| tim333 wrote:
| In the Thai system the distances between the stakes are
| measured and recorded on the registry document.
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| > Property disputes cause huge amounts of distress and
| financial cost in England, partly because ownership of
| boundaries is unclear. Some people spend years and tens of
| thousands of pounds arguing over that 1 foot strip of land.
|
| How frequent is that? Based on the original link, it
| appears that there is a process in place for when disputes
| arise.
|
| Disputes happen in the US too. We have legal descriptions
| that exactly specify property boundaries, but converting
| them from paper to dirt also costs a lot of money. And land
| shifts! A survey from 200 years ago might not be accurate
| anymore!
|
| EDIT - your link says "These days, it is rare to obtain
| planning permission to build right up to the boundary"
|
| My main argument is that the US and the UK have kind of
| settled on the same solution, which is to try to avoid
| situations where you need to know the boundary exactly. In
| both countries, if the exact boundary is important, you can
| pay lots of money to find out (and it will take a long time
| too).
|
| I think that the "exactness" of the American property
| system gives people a false sense of precision that doesn't
| actually exist in real life. I live in the US state of
| Illinois. In the southern half of the state, the legal
| definition of the state (as defined by the US Congress when
| the state was created) is based on 3 different rivers (the
| Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Wabash). That was a long
| time ago, and now the river banks have shifted a little
| bit. So you have parts of Illinois west of the Mississippi
| River, parts of Missouri east of the Mississippi River, and
| even parts of Indiana that are west of the Wabash River.
| Legally - what is written down as law - this is not
| possible!
| DanBC wrote:
| > EDIT - your link says "These days, it is rare to obtain
| planning permission to build right up to the boundary"
|
| Not all structures need planning permission. Someone can
| build a 2 metre wall right on the boundary. https://www.p
| lanningportal.co.uk/info/200130/common_projects...
| jefftk wrote:
| _> In the modern US, most land boundaries aren 't super
| important anymore._
|
| This depends enormously on density, lot size, and land value.
| My town has recently updated zoning to allow the construction
| of accessory dwelling units ("backyard cottages"), but
| whether a specific lot has a room for one often comes down to
| less than a foot. They are definitely going to require you to
| bring out a surveyor before you can get a construction
| permit.
| stakkur wrote:
| Several years ago, I was curious about how 'bare' England looked
| compared to my country (the US is ~36% forested). It turns out
| that <10% of England is forested. The long history of
| deforestation in England is even worse than it is in the US.
| michael1999 wrote:
| Britania ruled the waves with a wooden navy.
| [deleted]
| the_svd_doctor wrote:
| I'm not sure that's fair, given the relative density of the
| two. The US is truly enormous, especially compared to any
| European country.
| stakkur wrote:
| I think England has a much longer history of habitation, and
| so it's understandable that deforestation is more extensive
| (thousands of years vs. hundreds). Here's an article I like
| about that process in England: https://aeon.co/essays/who-
| chopped-down-britains-ancient-for...
|
| There are a lot of parallels in the US process of
| deforestation, except as you say on a much different scale.
| The US has lost ~75% of its virgin forests just since 1600.
| yodelshady wrote:
| For reference, _less than half_ the population of London - or
| about 80% of the population of Scotland - would give England
| the same population density as the US.
| strathmeyer wrote:
| There was a mini ice age after the first time they cut down all
| the trees in northern Europe.
| asdff wrote:
| The US has deforested far more land than is present in all of
| England. Look at the satellite map of the US and see huge
| swaths of uninterrupted farmland larger than entire European
| countries Most of the old growth forests in the US are long
| gone. A lot of what remains is new growth of >100 yrs old
| lacking the original biodiversity.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| So mostly government/utility agencies and the royal family.
| cybert00th wrote:
| Steady the buffs old chap, 4 out of 10 is hardly mostly
| [deleted]
| tialaramex wrote:
| The answer is actually _mostly_ "we don't know, a very large
| number of small landowners" but that's boring and the top line
| items are big landowners who collectively own about 20% of
| woodland.
|
| The two categories you mentioned are represented (e.g. the
| Duchy of Cornwall is the personal land holding of Prince
| Charles, the Forestry Commission is a government department for
| looking after this sort of thing) but there's also charities
| (the National Trust and Royal Society for the Protection of
| Birds are charities) and the Church (specifically the Church of
| England) in that top 10 list.
|
| And not so much royalty (only Charles is in that top list, and
| only his mother is in the second list of smaller personal
| estates, the Crown Estates do not actually belong to the
| monarch they belong to the country and so are effectively
| another government agency) as aristocrats: Dukes, Earls,
| Barons, these people aren't part of the royal family they've
| just inherited wealth and power.
| reedf1 wrote:
| The fascinating thing about the UK is that there is no land value
| tax. Some people say that council tax is the UK equivalent - but
| it only applies to furnished dwellings. This means that a lot of
| land owners in the UK sit on large valuable pieces of land at
| almost no cost to themselves.
| hpkuarg wrote:
| I dream of the day when a modern nation-state's expenses can be
| paid by land value tax and land value tax alone.
| est31 wrote:
| Kinda the opposite thing is happening right now in Germany.
| When introduced in 1968, the value added tax was 10%. Now
| it's 19%. Similarly, it was free for trucks to use the German
| highways. Now they have to pay fees. Only recently they
| expanded that to the federal roads as well (Bundesstrassen).
| As for the land, generally the federal government sells most
| of it to developers instead of developing it themselves (or
| letting developers develop and then charge rent on the land).
| lscotte wrote:
| Sounds like you have some terrible nightmares!
| tim333 wrote:
| Not exactly a land value tax but zero tax Monaco is funded
| basically by the state owning and renting out property. I
| think similar in Dubai.
|
| There are some practical advantages - if you've got a patch
| of dessert and charge tax on it you only can get so much but
| if you develop a luxury apartment complex on said land and
| rent them out you can get rather more. The state has an
| advantage over private developers as it can grant itself
| permission to build whatever.
|
| I sometimes think you could do something like that in places
| like London - the state build lux accom to replace tax
| revenue rather than letting private developers clean up.
| d4rti wrote:
| 26,570 GBP / hectare / year, if all land was priced equally
| to replace total UK government revenue. [1]
|
| 1: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=uk+total+government+
| re...
| iudqnolq wrote:
| You're assuming all land is privately owned, which isn't
| true in the UK. Large tracts are owned by the government,
| the royal family, and nobody.
| mrow84 wrote:
| An interesting figure! For easy comparison with the figures
| in the article it is around PS10,000 / acre year - makes
| you wonder what some of the landowners listed would do in
| such a situation (and makes it obvious why they would fight
| very hard to prevent it coming about).
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Take out the "valuable" because as you point out: there is no
| value tax. A lot of land owners in the UK sit on large pieces
| of land.
|
| The idea that land has value even when unused is one of this
| quirks of reasoning that seems "common sense" until you
| actually stop to think about it, because it makes no sense at
| all. And is one of the driving forces behind disenfranchisement
| of indigenous groups in so many countries.
| neilparikh wrote:
| Land definitely has value when unused. Land is the right to
| be in a certain geographic location, and exclude others from
| it. Why would that right not be valuable just because you're
| not using it? As the other commenter points out, that would
| imply that empty lots in cities are worthless, and we
| wouldn't see teardowns selling for millions.
| TheTrotters wrote:
| By that logic an empty plot of land in Manhattan would have
| no value.
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| Council tax is even worse as the occupier pays, not the owner
| [deleted]
| ascari wrote:
| This is so true. Many building companies own hundreds of low
| quality apartments in the cities and literally don't pay.
| neilparikh wrote:
| Who pays doesn't really matter too much. What matters the
| incidence of a tax, which is independent of who actually
| pays.
|
| If the incidence falls on the owner, but the occupier pays,
| they'll pay a lower rent to account for the tax.
|
| If the incidence falls on the occupier, but the owner pays,
| they'll charge a higher rent to account for the tax.
|
| This why I don't really like public discussions of taxes;
| they completely ignore incidence. For example, there's a call
| to "tax corporations more", which is all fine and well, but a
| corporate tax is sufficient to do so. You also need to make
| sure that the incidence of the corporate tax falls on the
| corporation.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| This is not really the case with the rental market. Since
| rental supply is almost completely inelastic in the short
| run rental prices are wholly determined by demand.
| Increasing property tax has marginal effect on demand so it
| doesn't lead to an increase in price.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| That's actually quite reasonable since the council tax
| finances local services (hence the name). The person who
| benefits from local services is the occupier, who may or may
| not be the owner.
|
| The issue with council tax is that it is extremely
| regressive: there are 8 bands with (very approximately) only
| a factor 4, from PS1000 to PS4000 a year, from lowest to
| highest. This means that a person in a crappy studio flat on
| a council estate pays PS1000 and another person in a
| Buckingham Palace style mansion worth tens of millions with
| tennis, swimming pool, whatnot, pays no more than PS4000
| since that's the maximum.
|
| This may explain why the wealthy in the UK never complain
| about council tax and tend to oppose land value tax...
| rory wrote:
| What happens when a property is unoccupied?
| reedf1 wrote:
| If it is unfurnished and no one is living in the property
| then no council tax is paid.
| [deleted]
| clort wrote:
| This is not necessarily true. In many parts of the
| country, you get a month free but otherwise the tax would
| need to be paid, which I guess is to cover landlords who
| are between tenants. (saves some effort setting it all up
| and tearing it down again when it was only empty for a
| week or so). Also, you may not be able to claim that
| month if it has been claimed in the last year.
| pmyteh wrote:
| It's actually up to the local council[0]. Oxford at least
| give you a month zero-rated, then start charging again
| (I'm in this position due to a messy move).
|
| [0]: https://www.gov.uk/council-tax/second-homes-and-
| empty-proper...
| rory wrote:
| Oh wow:
|
| > _You may pay less Council Tax for a property you own or
| rent that's not your main home._
|
| > _Councils can give furnished second homes or holiday
| homes a discount of up to 50%. Contact your council to
| find out if you can get a discount - it's up to them how
| much you can get._
|
| I'm sympathetic to the messy-move case, but discounting
| the tax for holiday homes seems quite regressive.
| pmyteh wrote:
| I agree, FWIW. The case when a property is uninhabitable
| because it's being rebuilt seems fair. Getting a discount
| just for leaving something empty (or using it once a
| month) does seem regressive.
|
| Fortunately(?), councils are basically all skirting
| bankruptcy, as a result of having their central grants
| slashed. So these discretionary discounts are becoming
| rare in actual practice.
| da39a3ee wrote:
| I don't recognize the right of humans within the same nation
| state to exclude other humans from tracts of land larger than
| their domestic environs (house, garden, etc). Is this a teenager-
| ish opinion? I do ask myself that. But I don't think it is. We
| are apes, on a planet with vegetation. There are certain things
| that are not available for exclusive ownership rights: air,
| water, scientific knowledge, and I would say the planet that we
| live on. Modulo the necessities of dividing the world into nation
| states and certain exclusions that governments may apply (armed
| forces training areas, etc). But basically, if you've got a big
| house and gardens, good for you; fine. If you've got a huge
| factory, OK, whatever, you can exclude people from the area. But
| can you own a moorland or woodland with natural habitat and
| exclude people from visiting it respectfully to walk on? No, I
| don't think you should be able to do that. Do you have the right
| to deny them access if they do not respect the land? Yes. Imagine
| if you grew up somewhere next to a parcel of land with natural
| vegetation and wildlife on it that you were deeply emotionally
| attached to. And then someone "bought it". Would you agree never
| to set foot on it simply because someone "owns" it? No, you are
| an ape on a planet and if you love an area of land you may walk
| on it respectfully. (If you can get into the country where it is
| located.)
| [deleted]
| Cyder wrote:
| Every state in the US keeps property records for tax purposes.
| Official surveys are often dine when bought and sold. Title
| insurance companies are strict about these things and mortgage
| companies require title insurance. It's all tightly regulated and
| you can look up online the exact boundaries of your property.
| vmh1928 wrote:
| This document contains an abbreviated history of the
| establishment of the North American (US and later Canada and
| Mexico,) horizontal control(benchmark) network that allowed for
| the precise description of the location of land pre-GPS. The
| history part starts on page 19.
|
| https://www.ngs.noaa.gov/PUBS_LIB/TRNOS88NGS19.pdf
| fiftyacorn wrote:
| The reason forest land ownership is so popular with the rich is
| it's free from inheritance tax and can be passed on for ever
| generating 1-2pct
| tim333 wrote:
| Also forest / land owners tend to be wealthy as the income from
| woodland is very low so you have to be well off not to worry
| about that.
| fiftyacorn wrote:
| There used to be a lot of grants on land management. Not sure
| on that situation post brexit
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