[HN Gopher] Working Title (Insurance)
___________________________________________________________________
Working Title (Insurance)
Author : Keegs
Score : 50 points
Date : 2024-07-01 16:00 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bitsaboutmoney.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bitsaboutmoney.com)
| danielvf wrote:
| A 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.
| tptacek wrote:
| 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.
| kube-system wrote:
| 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).
| jstanley wrote:
| > unlike England
|
| We have the same thing in England though.
| Animats wrote:
| 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...
| Terr_ wrote:
| > [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.
| ipython wrote:
| I 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.
| lokar wrote:
| Title 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.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| My 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.
| BillSaysThis wrote:
| He also was probably not financing the purchase with a
| mortgage.
| adolph wrote:
| If you are knowledgeable enough about the risk that's great.
| For an average person buying a house things can and do go
| sideways:
|
| https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/houston/article/ho...
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > The rest is a mix of government fee passthroughs and Obvious
| Nonsense, such as a $125 "water processing fee," $55 for a wire
| transfer where that number is just made up, etc. But if I were to
| go through each of the 16 line items summing up to $1,400, we'd
| be here all day.
|
| 1400 EUR here in notary and government racket to change the
| number of shares in the company. Two paragraphs containing ultra
| basic math wrapped in legalese.
|
| These 16 lines seems like they got a lot for $1400 compared to
| me. There's still way to go: the government rackets better and if
| they want to really sucker money in, they have to learn from the
| best!
| paulgerhardt wrote:
| I recently performed a title search on a property going back to
| the 1820's - the land was issued to the original owner by James
| Monroe and the buck stopped there.
|
| An acquaintance performed a title search on another property
| going back to the 1100's. They found a serious black and white
| error circa 1225 which voided the entire chain of claim. They did
| not report the error.
| cynusx wrote:
| The US has squatting laws, if you are living (uncontested) in a
| property for a determined period you can claim title.
|
| There are always gaps in emerging economies and this rule is
| one of the more useful ones to onboard assets into the legal
| system.
|
| cfr. De Soto - Mystery of Capital
| User23 wrote:
| Every state has their own laws. Interestingly some states
| advantage squatting with a colorable claim of title. For
| example if your uncle John leaves you real property in his
| will that he doesn't have title to and you notoriously occupy
| and use that property for seven years you can apply for a
| clean title. Without that colorable claim you might need
| twenty years or more.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-07-01 23:01 UTC)