This aims to be a complete list of the articles on real estate.
An estate in land is, in the law of England and Wales, an interest in real property that is or may become possessory. It is a type of personal property and encompasses land ownership, rental and other arrangements that give people the right to use land. This is distinct from sovereignty over the land, which includes the right to government and taxation.
The doctrine of privity of contract is a common law principle which provides that a contract cannot confer rights or impose obligations upon anyone who is not a party to that contract. It is related to, but distinct from, the doctrine of consideration, according to which a promise is legally enforceable only if valid consideration has been provided for it, and a plaintiff is legally entitled to enforce such a promise only if they are a promisee from whom the consideration has moved.
Assignment is a legal term used in the context of the laws of contract and of property. In both instances, assignment is the process whereby a person, the assignor, transfers rights or benefits to another, the assignee. An assignment may not transfer a duty, burden or detriment without the express agreement of the assignee. The right or benefit being assigned may be a gift or it may be paid for with a contractual consideration such as money.
An equitable servitude is a term used in the law of real property to describe a nonpossessory interest in land that operates much like a covenant running with the land. In England and Wales the term is defunct and in Scotland it has very long been a sub-type of the Scottish legal version of servitudes, which are what English law calls easements. However covenants and equitable servitudes in most of the jurisdictions across North America, are slightly different. The usual distinction is based on the remedy plaintiff seeks and precedent will allow for the scenario in question. Where the terms are unmerged, holders of a covenant seek money damages; holders of equitable servitudes seek injunctions. The term used to exist in England widely before Tulk v Moxhay and as byproduct of the Judicature Acts became one of the fullest mergers of equity and common law in England and Wales so as to agree initially on the term "equitable covenant", then coming to be united in the term covenant save that "equitable" bears a particular meaning in English property rights since at least 1925: it means not fully compliant with registration/written formalities. If lacks legally routine formalities it is not a full legal covenant and therefore more tenuous, often only enforceable personally and against the original covenantor.
A collateral contract is usually a single term contract, made in consideration of the party for whose benefit the contract operates agreeing to enter into the principal or main contract, which sets out additional terms relating to the same subject matter as the main contract. For example, a collateral contract is formed when one party pays the other party a certain sum for entry into another contract. A collateral contract may be between one of the parties and a third party.
A covenant, in its most general sense and historical sense, is a solemn promise to engage in or refrain from a specified action. Under historical English common law, a covenant was distinguished from an ordinary contract by the presence of a seal. Because the presence of a seal indicated an unusual solemnity in the promises made in a covenant, the common law would enforce a covenant even in the absence of consideration. In United States contract law, an implied covenant of good faith is presumed.
A restraint on alienation, in the law of real property, is a clause used in the conveyance of real property that seeks to prohibit the recipient from selling or otherwise transferring their interest in the property. Under the common law such restraints are void as against the public policy of allowing landowners to freely dispose of their property. Perhaps the ultimate restraint on alienation was the fee tail, a form of ownership which required that property be passed down in the same family from generation to generation, which has also been widely abolished.
The Land Registration Act 2002 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which repealed and replaced previous legislation governing land registration, in particular the Land Registration Act 1925, which governed an earlier, though similar, system. The Act, together with the Land Registration Rules, regulates the role and practice of HM Land Registry.
Privity of estate is a mutual or successive legal relationship to the same right in real property, such as the relationship between a landlord and tenant. Thus, privity of estate refers to the legal relationship that two parties bear when their estates constitute one estate in law.
Beswick v Beswick[1967] UKHL 2, [1968] AC 58 was a landmark English contract law case on privity of contract and specific performance. The Lords, overruling the decision of Lord Denning in the Court of Appeal, ruled that a person who was not party to a contract had no independent standing to sue to enforce it, even if the contract was clearly intended for their benefit.
The Law of Property Act 1925 is a statute of the United Kingdom Parliament. It forms part of an interrelated programme of legislation introduced by Lord Chancellor Lord Birkenhead between 1922 and 1925. The programme was intended to modernise the English law of real property. The Act deals principally with the transfer of freehold or leasehold land by deed.
A freehold, in common law jurisdictions such as England and Wales, Australia, Canada and Ireland, is the common mode of ownership of real property, or land, and all immovable structures attached to such land.
Smith and Snipes Hall Farm Ltd v River Douglas Catchment Board [1949] 2 KB 500 is an English land law and English contract law appeal decision. The case, decided by Denning LJ, confirmed positive covenants can supplant privity of contract in contracts to improve land and secondly a covenant should be implied where the contract shows an intention that the obligation would attach to the land. The case thirdly held in that context, a somewhat uncertain description of lands which was capable of being rendered certain by extrinsic evidence was sufficient to enforce the covenant.
Easements in English law are certain rights in English land law that a person has over another's land. Rights recognised as easements range from very widespread forms of rights of way, most rights to use service conduits such as telecommunications cables, power supply lines, supply pipes and drains, rights to use communal gardens and rights of light to more strained and novel forms. All types are subject to general rules and constraints. As one of the formalities in English law express, express legal easements must be created by deed.
Tulk v Moxhay is a landmark English land law case that decided that in certain cases a restrictive covenant can "run with the land" in equity. It is the reason Leicester Square exists today.
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.
Belchier v Parsons (1754) 96 ER 908 is an English trusts law case, which stands as one of the earliest formulations of the prudent person rule.
Morrells of Oxford Ltd v Oxford United Football Club [2001] Ch 459 is an English land law case concerning covenants and their interpretation in a conveyance, particularly discerning and distinguishing those expressly or impliedly with no intention to bind successors — those of a personal nature, enforceable "inter partes", that is between the parties to the original deed. It concerned a restraint of trade covenant and was unlike the others surrounding it not expressed to bind all heirs and assigns.
Rhone v Stephens[1994] UKHL 3 is an English land law case, at the court of final appeal level, concerning the succession to the burden of positive covenants in freehold land within which it is of relatively broad application. It is distinguished in cases of regular payments related to easements in English law which are enjoyed and some other narrow categories, many of which are similarly well-known and well-cited notable cases.
