In the United Kingdom, a ransom strip refers to a parcel of land needed to access an adjacent property from a public highway, to which the owner is denied access until payment is received. The strip of land can be either between the property and the highway, or be located between two properties. [1] The width of the ransom strip can be as narrow as 150 millimetres (5.9 in) wide, but it can lead to significant conflict. [2]
The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors advises property owners to locate and price any ransom strip on a property, as the cost to release the "ransom" should be deducted from the overall purchase price of the property. [2] The agreement to access such ransom strips is lodged with the Land Registry.[ citation needed ]
It may be possible to claim a prescriptive easement if there has been 20 years of uninterrupted access. [3]
A ransom strip can also include permission to widen a public road leading to a property. In 1999, a 10-year dispute over a ransom strip in Riddlesden, West Yorkshire, resulted in a £1.6 million payment to a group of homeowners, who agreed to sell a 16-foot (4.9 m) tract of their properties to widen a road leading to a new development of 350 executive homes. [4]
The Law of Property Act 1925 makes it a criminal offence to drive across common land without permission. [5]
The 1961 case of Stokes v. Cambridge determined that if a parcel of land would allow access to develop a neighbouring property, in a compulsory purchase of the land its owner is entitled to one-third of the resulting property value. [6]
The 1925 law was cited in the case of businessman Michael Farrow, who in 1986 purchased the feudal title Lord of the Manor of Newtown at auction for £4,200 from the Earl of Carnarvon. Farrow claimed Newtown Common and registered it with the Land Registry. He then transferred it to his company, Bakewell Management, which requested a fee of 6% of the property value from all of the residents who used the common to access their property. He was initially successful, although the courts cited the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 to set at 2% of the value of their homes as the maximum amount that owners of ransom strips could charge homeowners. The House of Lords ultimately overturned Farrow's victory on 1 April 2004, deciding that the residents had satisfied the requirement of using the property continuously for 20 years. [5] [7]
The term ransom strip is used in the rail transportation business if a train has to be equipped with safety systems from a monopoly supplier in order to travel on a short connecting line between two parts of a network that is equipped with standard systems.[ citation needed ]
This aims to be a complete list of the articles on real estate.
A homeowner association, or a homeowner community, is a private association-like entity in the United States, Canada, and certain other countries often formed either ipso jure in a building with multiple owner-occupancies, or by a real estate developer for the purpose of marketing, managing, and selling homes and lots in a residential subdivision. The developer will typically transfer control of the association to the homeowners after selling a predetermined number of lots.
Owner-occupancy or home-ownership is a form of housing tenure in which a person, called the owner-occupier, owner-occupant, or home owner, owns the home in which they live. The home can be a house, such as a single-family house, an apartment, condominium, or a housing cooperative. In addition to providing housing, owner-occupancy also functions as a real estate investment.
Adverse possession, sometimes colloquially described as "squatter's rights", is a legal principle in the Anglo-American common law under which a person who does not have legal title to a piece of property—usually land —may acquire legal ownership based on continuous possession or occupation of the property without the permission (licence) of its legal owner.
In the United States, a plat (plan) is a cadastral map, drawn to scale, showing the divisions of a piece of land. United States General Land Office surveyors drafted township plats of Public Lands Surveys to show the distance and bearing between section corners, sometimes including topographic or vegetation information. City, town or village plats show subdivisions broken into blocks with streets and alleys. Further refinement often splits blocks into individual lots, usually for the purpose of selling the described lots; this has become known as subdivision.
Torrens title is a land registration and land transfer system, in which a state creates and maintains a register of land holdings, which serves as the conclusive evidence of title of the person recorded on the register as the proprietor (owner), and of all other interests recorded on the register.
The bundle of rights is a metaphor to explain the complexities of property ownership. Law school professors of introductory property law courses frequently use this conceptualization to describe "full" property ownership as a partition of various entitlements of different stakeholders.
Allodial title constitutes ownership of real property that is independent of any superior landlord. Allodial title is related to the concept of land held "in allodium", or land ownership by occupancy and defense of the land.
As a legal term, ground rent specifically refers to regular payments made by a holder of a leasehold property to the freeholder or a superior leaseholder, as required under a lease. In this sense, a ground rent is created when a freehold piece of land is sold on a long lease or leases. The ground rent provides an income for the landowner. In economics, ground rent is a form of economic rent meaning all value accruing to titleholders as a result of the exclusive ownership of title privilege to location.
A partition is a term used in the law of real property to describe an act, by a court order or otherwise, to divide up a concurrent estate into separate portions representing the proportionate interests of the owners of property. It is sometimes described as a forced sale. Under the common law, any owner of property who owns an undivided concurrent interest in land can seek such a division. In some cases, the parties agree to a specific division of the land; if they are unable to do so, the court will determine an appropriate division. A sole owner, or several owners, of a piece of land may partition their land by entering a deed poll.
A profit, in the law of real property, is a nonpossessory interest in land similar to the better-known easement, which gives the holder the right to take natural resources such as petroleum, minerals, timber, and wild game from the land of another. Indeed, because of the necessity of allowing access to the land so that resources may be gathered, every profit contains an implied easement for the owner of the profit to enter the other party's land for the purpose of collecting the resources permitted by the profit.
Land registration is any of various systems by which matters concerning ownership, possession, or other rights in land are formally recorded to provide evidence of title, facilitate transactions, and prevent unlawful disposal. The information recorded and the protection provided by land registration varies widely by jurisdiction.
Real estate investing involves the purchase, management and sale or rental of real estate for profit. Someone who actively or passively invests in real estate is called a real estate entrepreneur or a real estate investor. Some investors actively develop, improve or renovate properties to make more money from them.
In real estate, a lot or plot is a tract or parcel of land owned or meant to be owned by some owner(s). A plot is essentially considered a parcel of real property in some countries or immovable property in other countries. Possible owner(s) of a plot can be one or more person(s) or another legal entity, such as a company/corporation, organization, government, or trust. A common form of ownership of a plot is called fee simple in some countries.
In common law jurisdictions such as England and Wales, Australia, Canada, and Ireland, a freehold is the common mode of ownership of real property, or land, and all immovable structures attached to such land. It is in contrast to a leasehold, in which the property reverts to the owner of the land after the lease period expires or otherwise lawfully terminates. For an estate to be a freehold, it must possess two qualities: immobility and ownership of it must be forever. If the time of ownership can be fixed and determined, it cannot be a freehold. It is "An estate in land held in fee simple, fee tail or for term of life."
An easement is a nonpossessory right to use and/or enter onto the real property of another without possessing it. It is "best typified in the right of way which one landowner, A, may enjoy over the land of another, B". An easement is a property right and type of incorporeal property in itself at common law in most jurisdictions.
Newtown Common is a village in the Basingstoke and Deane district of Hampshire, England. Its nearest town is Newbury, which lies approximately 2.5 miles (4.1 km) north-east from the village.
English land law is the law of real property in England and Wales. Because of its heavy historical and social significance, land is usually seen as the most important part of English property law. Ownership of land has its roots in the feudal system established by William the Conqueror after 1066, and with a gradually diminishing aristocratic presence, now sees a large number of owners playing in an active market for real estate.
A telecommunications lease is a lease that exists between a telecommunications provider, or a wireless company, and a landowner. Similar to other real estate leases, a telecommunications lease is put in place as an agreement to lease space on the landowner’s property for a telecommunications site or cellular tower for a specified length of time. In exchange for the use of space, the telecommunications provider agrees to pay the landowner rent. Telecom leases can be excellent sources of ancillary income, in some cases providing the landowner with thousands of dollars per month.
A landlocked parcel is a real estate plot that has no legal access to a public right of way. Generally, a landlocked parcel has less value than a parcel that is not landlocked. Often, the owner of a landlocked parcel can obtain access to a public roadway by easement.