Years a ago, I ran across an article on Adverse Possession, and how proper can be transferred / acquired / stolen that way.
But there is a legal process, and a lot of jumping through hoops, to accomplish it.
“someone who squats on a property for a certain amount of time, treats the property as their own, pays property taxes, lives their life as if they are the owner, and is never legally asked to leave can eventually claim it as their own.”
I believe they have to publish intentions in the newspaper, and prove that they’ve made Ed c very effort to contact the owner.
In some states you can acquire property by paying someone’s back unpaid property taxes. In New Jersey it can be done with a few caveats. The owner has a certain number of years in which they can pay off all the property taxes up to date, from which the person who paid the prior unpaid taxes gets reimbursed. But, if the time limit expires with nothing from the owner, then an add must be placed in local papers serving notice that the property is about to change hands due to unpaid property taxes. Then after the “due notice” time has lapsed the person who paid the unpaid property taxes and all properrty taxes since can get a free title to the property.
I knew someone in south Jersey who acquired quite a number of properties in that way, all but two of which were undeveloped properties. However, they only built on two of the other properties and over time they eventually became “land poor” - paying taxes on undeveloped land they could not afford to develop and which had issues that meant development costs were going to be higher than average, which was not attracting buyers.