Posted on 12/11/2023 7:39:10 AM PST by lowbridge
A man in the U.K., who took over a retiree’s empty home in London and gained legal ownership of it under a "quirky" ancient Roman law, has sold the property for a profit, local media reports.
A British construction worker identified as Keith Best spotted an empty three-bedroom, semi-detached home in London’s Newbury Park back in 1997 while working a construction job nearby, according to Express. Best began renovating the property and ultimately moved his family into the home in 2012.
The house, however, belonged to retiree Colin Curtis, who lived on the property with his mother until the late 1990s, when he moved out. Curtis inherited the property, but under what has been described as a "quirky" ancient Roman law that allows "someone in possession of a good without title to become the lawful proprietor if the original owner didn't show up after some time," Best became the home’s legal owner, the Guardian previously reported.
Best had filed an application for adverse possession about a decade ago in order to legally obtain the property. The Chief Land Registrar initially denied the application following a law that criminalized squatting, but the ruling was overturned by the High Court in 2014 when a judge ruled the Registrar's decision was "founded on an error of law," the Daily Mail reported.
The judge ruled that previous laws approached squatting issues as civil matters, and despite the judge finding Curtis committed criminal trespass, he was granted ownership of the home. The judge found that at least 10 years had passed "without effective action by the owner" to take control of the property.
"This judgement recognises that making residential squatting a criminal offence was not intended to impact on the law of adverse possession, which is an old and quirky law,"
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Under the circumstances, his profit is 100%.
Who said crime doesn’t pay? Squatters are a plague, both in the UK and here, and their crimes need to be punished in criminal courts, not civil courts.
If taxes were paid by the true homeowner, the court (judge who gave the title) away have no business in determining ownership, IMO.
Its not “quirky” and there is a reason for it. Yes, I didn’t like Adverse Possession either when I first learned about it in my first year of law school. The purpose of it however is to put land to maximum economic productive use. If you have an owner who is absent, who just goes away and leaves a property to fall into rack and ruin, it is better that somebody put that property to productive use.
The actual owner can come back and evict the squatter for many years - the common law says 10 years. This is governed by statute in most US states and its rare to be less than 7 years. Also, in many states, the squatter has to be paying the annual property tax on the property for that time. IF the owner does not come back and evict the squatter after that time though.....tough. The squatter can then legally claim it. The squatter is the one who was paying the taxes and upkeep and making it productive rather than just wasting it all that time.
The moral of the story.....don’t sit on your rights. If you don’t exercise them, you could lose them.
100%, Less renovation costs.
Mixed feelings on this. I do not like people that own property and allow them to become blighted and abandoned neighborhood eyesores.
All the owner had to do is show up years ago and evict him as a squatter.
Well, he did renovate the property so he did have some costs in it.
You do not ever ‘own’ real estate.
You simply rent it from the government...............
Then the state/government can "condemn" the property and take it under eminent domain laws, through due process.
I do not believe there is anything in the USA comparable to this "quirky" British law - nor should there be.
It seems that the rightful owner was properly “renting” the property from the government — and then the squatter sold it and pocketed the profits.
I do not believe there is anything in the USA comparable to this “quirky” British law - nor should there be.
Under certain circumstances, a trespasser can occupy and gain legal ownership to land via the doctrine of “Adverse Possession.” To qualify as adverse possession sufficient to get ownership, the trespasser’s occupation of the land typically must be:
hostile (meaning without permission, though the definition can vary)
actual (meaning physical occupation)
open and notorious (meaning the possession is obvious to onlookers), and
exclusive and continuous for a certain period of time.
The time period that the trespasser must occupy the land varies by state. To find the period for your state, see the table below.
In American law, paying the taxes is an important point in adverse possession.
You need to work on your arithmetic.
If he bought it for $100 and sold it for $200, his profit is 100%: (200-100)/100 -1 = 100%
If he bought it for $0 and sold it for $200, his profit is infinitely high: (200-0)/0 - 1 = infinity. Actually, it is undefined since you cannot divide by zero. Just do the limit as the purchase price goes to zero.
Yes - this is true.
Just see what happens if you don’t pay the government their annual rent.......
Very odd - did he not check on the property during any of that time?
My mother’s house sat empty for a year after she died - we checked on it once a week - and had a Ring Camera set up so we knew who was on the property at any given time.
Over time, he, along with other property owners, had to hire private security to keep squatters from taking over their properties.
A few years ago, he discovered that the government had taken over the property and sold it off to some crony, while at the same time my BIL continued to pay taxes on it.......
Well, you’re right. I should have said it was “all profit.” However, since I followed tradition and did not read the article before posting, I didn’t catch that he had put in some capital to renovate the house.
WADR to the law, the US Constitution puts no time limit on our rights.
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