2025.02.
19 Property Law
- Land is ‘real property’
- Includes all things permanently fixed to the land
- All things that are appurtenant
- Trees
- Buildings
- Etc
- Real property interests
- Estate
- Interests in land that is now possessory or which will entitle the owner to
possession at some future time when intervening states have ended
- Leasehold estate
- Possessory right and use for some limited or predetermined period of time
- Freehold estate
- Potentially infinite duration (or unpredictable length) the fee simple
absolute
- Property & Law
- Back to the bundle of rights concept
- Personal Property Takeaways
- Matters of personal property often depends on actions, timing, and notice
- Fee simple determinable
- Interest terminates upon occurrence of a stated events
- If a specified event takes place, the property reverts and owner’s interest
terminates
- Fee simple condition subsequent
- Gives the grantor the power to terminate on happening of a specified event
- Grantor has to exercise by retaking property
- Life estate
- An estate whose duration is limited to the life of the party holding it (or another
person)
- Life tenant entitled to income but upon death the property will go to the holder of
the remainder of interest or to grantor by revision
- Life Estate and Waste
- Duty of life tenant to keep up property and preserve for remainderman
- Waste is not allowed
- Keeping it up,
- Acquiring Property
- Contracts for Real Estate
- General contracting rules apply (to be discussed later)
- Statute of Frauds
- Contracts for the sale of real estate must be in writing to be
enforceable; most important contracting aspect
- Spell out every term of importance
- Deed
- A legal instrument that transfers legal title in real estate
- Title
- Contracts; Basics
- An agreement between two or more competent parties consisting of a promise or
a set of promises which the law will enforce or the performance of which the law
recognizes as a duty
- Individuals conduct as among themselves via mutual agreements
- Must be legally competent parties
- Must be legally enforceable promises
- Necessary components: offer, acceptance, and consideration
- Offer
- Creates a power of acceptance
- Creates a corresponding liability
- Need reasonable expectation of willingness to enter the contract
- Acceptance
- Must be absolute, unqualified and unconditional
- By person with power to accept (incl competence)
- On the terms of the offer
- Changes in offer = counter offer
- Consideration
- Exchange of something of value or promise of something of value
- Legally competent
- Persons entering into contract must have legal capacity
- Other interests in property
- Easements
- The right of one property owner to use the land of another for specific
purposes (e.g. access)
- Example
- Powerline
- Sidewalks
- Dominant tenement: land in which the easement right exists
- Created by express grant or reservation
- Include in deed or separate deed, will, etc.
- Reservation would be selling land and keeping easement
- Created by prescription
- Similar to adverse possession
- Creation by implication
- Conveyance without reservation, circumstances imply intent to
create; adjacent lands under same owner, subsequently sold
- Passes by subsequent owners of the land (dominant and servient)
involved; is a separate property right
- Can be destroyed or lost due to nonuse or abandonment
- Acquiring Property
- Basics
- Delivery of the deed transfers ownership; parting with control is
transfer of property (Russell v. Rowand)
- False representation of material fact, with intention to deceive
(seller) with justifiable reliance (buyer) = revocation
- Adverse Possession
- Possession that is hostile, actual, visible, notorious and
exclusive, continuous for 20 years or more
- If proved, possessor gets title
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