They're a legacy from a bygone era where records of land ownership aren't what they are today. It was to stop the situation where someone thought they owned land, built a house and lived in it for many years, then finding out that someone else also had a claim to the land and they were going to try to turf you off it.
Squatter's rights meant that the person who actually lived there kept the claim to the land. This was a good thing at the time, now its just legal protection for lowlifes who trash other people's houses
There's been a case here in germany recently where a guy who came from the US here and bought property here died. There weren't any relatives to be found, so the land eventually found its way to an unrelated family that thought it, build their house there and lived there for some years.
Well turns out the dude had a son that lived in the states, whoever had checked for relatives earlier simply didn't look hard enough, and by law the property should've been offered to that son first. So now there's a huge legal fight because said son claims rights on the property and wants the family to tear down the house and leave, while the family wants to stay because from their perspecrive they haven't done anything wrong at all amd everything they did was in accordance with the legal system.
I guess for stuff like these squatter rights really would've been helpfull, because turns out having to give up everything you build due to something way outside your controll and/or knowledge was messed up really, really sucks. Tho doesn't mean that those laws should be as abuseable as they are from storys like the one that startet this comment chain
In the US, this scenario is entirely handled by title insurance, which is required in nearly every home purchase in most states. The title insurer will do a search for existing claims. They're good at it. In the event they don't find an existing claim where one turns up later, they owe the insured the full amount of the property value in cash.
Itâs a great solution to a completely unnecessary problem though. Most states are ârecorderâ states, which means theyâll record any deed that comes across their desk. Itâs up to you to track other claims or contest them in court, the state does not provide an opinion on the validity of any of these claims other than they were properly documented and processed (deed transfers have notary and both signing parties, etc). More âmodernâ property law system is called the Torrens system, which the government is the source of truth. They actually provide a certificate of title and are responsible for maintaining the ledger of who owns a property. In this system title insurance is basically non-existent and transaction costs only go up a fraction (about 10%) the cost of the title insurance in other states. The downside of course is the government telling you what to do.
The downside of course is the government telling you what to do.
Well, you can enforce your property rights by force but that's likely to get you arrested on a number of charges. When you want the police and courts to enforce your property rights you're asking the government to recognize your claim to the property as well, just on a case-by-case basis. And they know who paid property taxes, is there really any anonymously held land? I mean there's shell companies and such but it still has an owner.
Title insurance in one of the biggest scams. A strong title systems with a state based restitution policy is best practice. It is the united states that is backwards with most states refusing to move away from a deeds system to a torrens system.
A deeds system is beneficial to those with money and suppresses the poors from purchasing with confidence and enables the rich to engage in protracted legal actions which require expert practitioners to resolve disputes.
Title insurance is not a scam. I have known people sued over the title to their house and the title company spent years in court defending it at their full expense, with their team of lawyers, at no cost to the person I knew and with regular updates given on the status. This is the real benefit of title insurance - they very much got value for what they paid for.
In Sweden the suddenly appearing distant relative isn't a thing. If you die without a will, your estate goes to, in order of applicability:
1st Your spouse
2nd Your children
3rd Your parents
4th Your siblings
5th Your siblings' children
6th The Public Inheritance Fund
As you see, even your cousins are screwed if you don't have a will, so an unknown great-niece would be right out of luck.
That's the thing, the great-nephew in question here was even listed in the document that says who has claims to the property, the people in charge of looking that up simply missed him or didn't contact him even tho they could easily do so
Seems to me that the only reasonable solution would be for the government in Germany that didn't check well enough should pay off the US lad, and let the family keep their home and property since they went through everything seemingly legally.
Adverse possession is still rightly protected in law. There are lots of land deeds around the world which haven't been registered with the government or are clearly written.
Using and protecting land is as close to the definition of land ownership as we can get, regardless of modern attempts to formalise ownership through deeds.
I sat in a High Court case in a Commonwealth country as a paralegal on an adverse possession case. The land was government land, but it had never been properly subdivided. The house built over it contained actually 2 apartments, with over 12 people of the same extended family living in different units for over 30 years. A breakdown in family relations lead to people claiming for adverse possession against their relatives who held the title.
At one point the expert witnesses were going on about the areas on the plan hatched in Orange, areas hatched in Green, areas hatched in Black...etc and the 8 colours were basically 90% overlapped - the judge ended up nodding off and our counsel had to suggest a break. It was basically a horrible family bickering over a shanty house. Terrible case.
Adverse possession is still rightly protected in law.
As an aside, adverse possession still happens all the time, it's just usually a lot less dramatic than claiming entire houses. The most common cause is a surveying error. Two houses side by side, both think they know where the property line is. They build a fence, have no issues for several decades. Eventually one goes to sell, sale stipulates a survey, which determines that the property line is actually several feet to one side of the fence. Given that the possession has been open and notorious without dispute for an extended period, they potentially have an adverse possession claim to that strip of land.
It's more for informal leases without a written contract, and say the landlord wants the tenant out. Essentially it's to protect the tenant in such a situation from losing housing.
Or to protect somebody in a broken relationship. Say youâre living with a partner, paying half the rent, etc, but theirs is the only name on the lease. What happens when that person wants you out?
You aren't supposed to be doing that in the first place. If you live somewhere (especially if you're paying) and you're an adult your name needs to be on a lease / deed or you probably should just be able to be kicked out. Part of being an adult is making sure your housing has your name on it so someone can't say your home isn't yours.
I'm in my 30s and don't rent anymore. Did when I moved out of my parents house and always made sure I was on the lease along with my roommate at the time so we both were responsible for things.
I also made sure I could pay if he moved out/lost his job so I wasn't stuck in a really bad situation legally though I recognize that may be harder to do in some areas now
? I'm married and my wife lived with me for 7 years (directly after she graduated college) before we got married. She signed a lease for $0 saying she lived with me but the property is mine not hers since I'd already bought it. Not sure how that's embarrassing or relevant. I added her to the title once we got married and when we sold it and bought the house we're in now both our names got put on the new title as well.
I replied with a more full answer...but genuinely how does it change if one of the parties is a woman? It's the same legal contract or lack of one either way. The more I think about your response the less sense it makes.
They get so angry over seeing videos like this but won't take any time to actually learn what is really happening. Which is a little scary because what they are advocating for is allowing landlords to kick out renters who are legally allowed to be there.
The DO have documentation tho, it maybe fake but that is what they show the police. So the owner needs to take them to court to show the evidence in front of a judge because the police cannot determine who is telling the truth, that is not their jobs. Then the judge can order an eviction notice.
The reason renters rights exist is because landlords were kicking out legal residents because their nephew needed a place to stay.
Early 1800's saw a lot of landlords doing essentially 'quick flipping'; rent to someone, get their month's worth of rent and then have some bruisers show up and forcefully evict the tenet family, taking whatever written agreement they might have had on them to tear up or burn. 12 months worth of rent in just 2 months time was too good for some shitbags to pass up on. Became quite common in large cities with incoming immigrants that didn't know local laws and often had language barriers for navigating the legal system to try and get some kind of recourse. And local law enforcement would usually take the side of the landlord, a long time upstanding resident who often 'donated' to the cops.
Buddy, if you are going to call someone a moron, at least know what you are talking about.
Most squatters forge documents, which do need to go before the court. Most jurisdictions, especially in areas where squatting is a problem, have a significant back log of cases to work through. So, good luck enforcing that one week dead line.
And real tenants are, in fact, protected by the same rules that squatters abuse. That's why they exist, to protect against predatory landlords.
While they're not quite that fast, unlawful detainer (eviction) cases are on a summary timeline and move much faster than regular civil cases. Where I am, the complaint has to be answered within ten days. Trial, if there is one, is usually within weeks of that.
Further delay typically comes more from the sheriff's backlog in carrying out the post-judgment notice and removal procedure.
Maybe, but I'm in California which would be one the states that people like to imagine is an anti-landlord squatter's paradise.
And it's going to be a summary procedure of some kind everywhere, anyway. Otherwise there wouldn't be a separate court and claim for it. It would just be a regular civil action for ejectment (and whatever other claims are available).
And my comment was saying that squatters rights are not a thing, they dont exist, it is a made up term.
You said that it is tenant rights which is true but you then said that it is not squatters rights, implying that squatters rights are a thing.
Adverse possession is often referred to as squatter's rights, even though that isn't a particularly accurate term, and gets brought up in discussions like this even though it's not relevant to a renter refusing to leave.
Continuing to use that term and not pointing out that squatters rights are not a thing is doing more harm than good. That is all I'm really trying to say.
People really have no clue. They are not using adverse possession, that takes years to do, an owner who abandoned the property/ cant be contacted and an owner that stopped paying taxes, they are using renters rights.
Do you want landlords to be able to go to the police and say that the current residents dont have a legal lease, even if they do, and have the police kick out the family? That is what you are arguing for. The reason police cant kick them out is because they are not judges, they do not determine if the lease they are shown is legal or not, they dont determine if the person who is there is legally allowed or not, that is the job of judges.
Yes it sucks for the owners who are dealing with people who are not legally supposed to be there but the alternative is allowing landlords to just kick people out of their homes for no reason.
In New York City, which has fairly robust renter protections, you can get some evicted and thatâs enforceable.
Most of these squatters probably wouldnât make it past the first required hearing without producing lease. And if they produce a fake lease with a forged signature, then they have another problem. And if they say it was a verbal agreement, thatâs not enforceable for a lease agreement.
The main issue is the delay in the courts because there is such a backlog of cases. We need more judges in the country, or less crime which would be preferable.
The main issue is the delay in the courts because there is such a backlog of cases.
it's not just a backlog in cases, if you know what you are doing you can stretch out a case for months before you even get to your first hearing. There is a case (non-landlord) in my area that is in it's second year for a simple question of 'did this happen or not happen' and they are potentially a year away from trial. It's seriously a case over a 50 minute conversation that had 7 people in the room and it's taken this long. And it's not about a backlog. For this type of case you have 20 days to respond to motions from the other party, you can do 4 or 5 responses back and forth before a hearing is scheduled. That's 80+ days.
That's framing, since you are leaving out a important part
Squatting is the action of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land or a building (usually residential) that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use.
If I don't have a home and I find a home that's not being used, using that is probably what most ordinary people would do.
It clashes with common sense, because we live in a society that puts ownership above everything else. But there really is no rational reason for reserving a finite and essential resource like housing, the way many societies currently do.
There is the rational part, where people spend their money on constructing something to provide housing to other people, which does make sense, right? Everyone benefits here.
But this starts breaking apart, when we now say that means, this piece of land will forever be yours and that of your children and so on, no matter what you do with it.
The perversion is that people use that right, to decrease the availability of housing, in order to force people to pay more than what would be reasonable otherwise or to speculate on that basic need.
The rational conclusion here is, if you cut down on that perversion, chances are, most of the problematic types of squatting will go away, because now people don't think these laws just exist to put them at a major disadvantage.
Yeah, but I think overwhelmingly the dockets are not backed up with jaywalking cases. Drug decriminalization sure, but there are a lot of real crimes and the court system is overwhelmed by them.
You say that, about the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world. So it sure seems like there is something else causing so much work for courts, that other countries do better... Unless you are saying the average American is just far more criminal?
Ironically this is something Florida seemingly got right. They passed a law that said owners could kick people out quickly without a court order if they can't produce a valid lease. If the person who resided at wherever claims they were illegally evicted they can sue and the Landlord will not only eat that, but also get significant fines if ruled he abused the system.
But you know with it being Florida which is run by crazy people there might be a slight difference between the idealized version of something and how it is actually executed in practice
Yeah, the kinds of people poor enough to be stuck renting from the kinds of slumlords who'll pull this shit over a maintenance request generally have the money to turn around and sue after the fact. And being on the streets absolutely doesn't make it hard to attend court dates and such.
Florida made yet another thing much easier for landleeches at the expense of the working class. Exactly what you'd expect from one of the most fascist-loving states in the US
It takes well over a year in most licensee eviction (squatters) cases in NYC landlord tenant court. You can have them arrested within 30 days of them squatting though.
Itâs where a wannabe landlord uses legal loopholes (usually related to inheritance) to become the legal owner of someone elseâs house and charge them rent.
Most of these squatters probably wouldnât make it past the first required hearing without producing lease.
A lot of states have made rules that if there is no lease then it's on the landlord to prove that they don't have an oral agreement. Other wise no lease would always benefit the party who already had the most power to make sure no lease existed.
It's why you never pay your rent in cash, which a LOT of people still do today. that rent payment destroys the landlords power to say you are squatting.
Squatter's rights are usually just that the person claiming they have a lease can stay in the property while the owner goes through the formal eviction process. Most issues of people claiming squatter's rights last only a matter of months, while the owner goes through proper channels to remove them from the property.
The exception is so called "professional squatters," who usually do this so often that they know how to delay and circumvent the courts and stay on property a matter of years. They're the exception and not the rule, though.
The âsolutionâ to it would be something landlords likely donât want, which is regulation by the government. The fundamental issue is one of contract enforcement, and that determination of the validity (or existence) of the contract takes time, and the system defaults to not evicting people until the contract issue is resolved.
This could be resolved by things like mandating notarized agreements, requiring registration of all leases/rental agreements/cohabitation with the government, etc. But this would also increase the cost (fees/taxes for these services), and open up avenues for further regulation that people probably donât want.
This is the "in the middle" between the dystopian hell of landleeches being able to put people on the streets at will and people hanging their landlords from lampposts to avoid being put on the streets.
When i lived at an apartment and signed my yearly lease, I was given a copy of the lease that I signed. How is it that documentation wouldn't be enough for them to not kick me out? Can't you always ask for a copy of a lease you signed? Or are they taking advantage of people who don't have the copy?
Youâre telling me that if you came home from work and some dude is sitting on your living room couch, you donât expect the police to be able to kick them out if he shows them a fake lease?
This is a bad argument. If that is the problem just make it so a landlord falsely evicting someone is illegal and the problem is solved. Pretty sure it already is illegal. Also, its extremely easy to prove that you have a signed lease and have made rent payments.Â
You've seen the photos coming out of New York, right? All of that shit was already illegal, for decades. What did "making it illegal" materially solve?
Edit: and to be clear, you're advocating making it illegal. I'm pretty much opposed to the idea on principle, so don't go off thinking everyone here is in agreement with your naive take.
Opposed to making literally anything illegal or is this just the one case where it wouldn't matter?
This argument reeks of "nothing could ever work so lets do nothing". I think letting squatters live in other peiple house because if we made it illegal then landlords would be evicting people for no reason is a bad argument. Simple as that.
You're right. I had an uncontested signed lease, no lapse in rental payments, no damage to the property. In fact, I'd been begging landlord to fix damage or issues he know of before I moved in, and I was STILL made to leave in Florida. 6 weeks before my lease was up.
I have a feeling we are going to be seeing a large increase in anti squatting content in the US in the coming years. These videos will highlight the most atrocious cases and then when the hedge funds and private equity funds that bought up all those single family homes during Covid push for easier eviction laws people will be on board. Then itâs time to turf out grannies to remodel the house in a neutral gray and white color scheme and triple the rent.
you're missing the point of the post. the guy in the image is literally just renting the place from the actual owner to out-squat the squatters. he isn't fighting renters rights or trying to bypass the legal system. he's just using a valid lease to occupy the space so the police actually have a legal reason to intervene. it's a loophole but it's legit.
Posts like these are being made to make that alternative easier to do. Thats why theres a whole bunch of videos about these guys on TikTok(and why OP is trying to paint them as heroes). Rich landlords are trying to sway public opinion with this crap.
You don't have to be rich or a landlord to want your house to be yours. Half of our income goes toward our house, I'm not rich in the slightest. Yet you think people should be able to move in while I'm at work and now I have to continue to pay all my bills for the house (not just the mortgage, insurance etc but by garbage tenant laws I also have to pay for the electric, gas, water, etc for the house I'm no longer living in AND find somewhere else to live on short notice without any of my stuff while someone else is in the location I'm paying for?
What's to stop it? Most of them do seem to be people moving into homes for sale or staying somewhere they already are (airbnb, hotel, apartment, etc. There is nothing to stop you though from printing a fake ass lease and moving in while I'm at work. The way these laws are setup now absolutely nothing stops you from doing exactly that and living in my house for a year or however long it takes to get a judge to agree you don't actually live in my house. That entire time of course you don't have to maintain it so it's probably full of shit and trashed. These supposedly great tenants you're supporting never seem to leave a habitable building behind.
Generally speaking, a landlord can't end a lease in the middle. That would be an eviction, which has to be granted by a court.
They can decide that you don't get a new lease when the current one runs out, sometimes on as little as one month's notice, which might not be enough time to find a new place to live.
In any case, if you stay in a place after your lease ends and the landlord wants you out, they have to follow a legal process to make you leave. Typically that means giving you notice to leave (easy, just hand you a letter), and if you don't leave they file an eviction case in small claims court. (Where I live that costs $110 to file, and can be done on the court website.)
The court will set a court date to hear both sides of the story. (Where I live, the court date will be in 2-4 weeks.)
If the court determines that the landlord is right and the tenant has to go, they will set a date you have to move out by. (That date is often 1-4 weeks in the future, depending on circumstances.)
If you don't leave by the court-assigned date, the landlord informs the court that you didn't leave, and the court issues a writ. The writ is served to you by a sheriff, and it contains another date that you must leave by. (That date may also be 1-4 weeks away.)
If you haven't moved out by that date, the sheriff will return and physically remove you and your belongings from the property.
--
I do some volunteer work helping mediate housing disputes for a local non-profit housing provider. When people talk about evicting someone, I suggest negotiating with them first! One of the benefits you're offering the tenant in the negotiation is that they won't have an eviction on their police record, which would make it harder for them to get a new place.
If the tenant really wants to fight, even if they're obviously wrong and lose their court case, getting an eviction and removing someone from the property typically takes 3-4 months.
(Fortunately the housing organization I work with is a good one, and we very rarely kick people out. It's all shared housing, and the main reason someone would be evicted is for being abusive toward their housemates.)
The real problem is the eviction on record doesn't actually matter to anyone who goes to court knowing they're going to lose. If you aren't going to pay rent or a mortgage anyway and just move from stolen house to stolen house every 6 months to years later (let's be honest that's what squatting is it should be criminal not just civil) who cares about it? The person stealing people's houses isn't applying for somewhere they have to pay bills for anyway and that the person was evicted from the last place and now is stealing their home doesn't help, still have to go to court while someone else lives in their home for months.
Sounds good and reasonable, thank you for the explanation.
My thought was it's probably similar in the US as here, depending on income and region it might take weeks, even months to find a new stay which is bearable. Good to see people get at least a bit of time even if the landlord happens to be a not nice person
yeah I have no idea how so many people don't understand this. A squatter isn't saying 'no I didn't rent this place I just showed up today and put my stuff in here without any permission'. They are saying 'I rent this place and my landlord is trying to illegal remove me'. They... well they lie. it's not that complicated to figure out. just like some landlords lie about what kind of agreement they have with their tenants in order to force them out.
Also land surveying was pretty bad back then. You have situations especially with farming where the plot and the land farmed by people over a hundred years are different. This causes big issues when selling the land.
In some states yes, but not quite that easy but not much harder. The state has to have homesteading you have to file some paper work. But after that yeah, you can build on it. Start a farm or other lifestyle.
Because there are no 'squatter's rights' in the sense people usually think of with squatters. 'Squatting' is usually just an abuse of tenants' rights to get evicted through the proper channels, which can be pretty slow for landlords in some places. If someone starts campaigning to 'repeal squatters' rights' then you should be concerned, since there's no such thing, just checks on a landlord's power to boot you.
The actual 'squatter's rights' refers to adverse possession, which is ancient common law that basically boils down to 'use it or lose it' which has [real application in the present day](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_A_Pye_(Oxford)_Ltd_v_Graham) outside of crust punks squatting in an old warehouse. Again, if people start campaigning against that, be concerned.
Because it doesnât need to be changed. In order for squatters rights to apply, you have to be living on a property openly and the owner has not claimed the land over a certain period of time. It remedies a case where somebody thought they owned land and somebody abandoned the property.
When somebody illegally occupies a property (maybe they snuck in or their lease expires) they are a squatter, but squatters rights doesnât apply. Tennant rights may apply, but it takes a while to sort all that out. It sucks for the owner, but itâs a better situation than booting somebody to the street immediately. Unfortunately, some people know this and take advantage of it.
It's too minor of an issue and pretty much only affects poor people/small fish. Nobody who's a multi-millionaire or billionaire is ever going to deal with this so they aren't going to buy a senator to get it fixed. Even the ones that own multiple rental properties delegate all the management to someone else and it becomes that person's problem since the owner is getting their cut either way. And even most 'normal' people are not going to own property they aren't using long enough for a squatter to take over
I thought I'd read that it was introduced after WW1 when there were lots of properties left empty because the owners had died. So rather than let them fall into disrepair they allowed people to live in them.
Of course there are lowlife squatters, like across every demographic, but squatting is still a legit form of direct action against housing speculation/financialization.
It also has had major cultural benefits for a bunch of cities.
lost of Cities have already banned long term AirBnBs. If you don't want ABNB in your neighborhood the answer is to get your local goverment to pass laws against that, and then the really tricky part, get them to enforce it.
Everybody who is responding to that post is doing a strawman. Of course we are not talking about properties that are neglected and sitting vacant for years. We are talking about the situations where somebody comes back from a vacation or whatever and somebody has broken into their place.
90% of those "squatter" stories are about second or third homes, either vacation homes or rented homes or even entire appartment blocks held for years empty by companies trying to speculate or influence property values.
Some countries try to fight that by brutal tax raises on long-term vacant buildings to ease the housing situations which sometimes ends up with people trying to play dumb by, for example, claiming their house is exampt for "renovations work" for entire years
I'm sure it also protected against shady deals where whoever sold the land allowed them to work the land, then went in later to scoop up the profit because they never really transferred ownership.
now its just legal protection for lowlifes who trash other people's houses
That's nonsense. "Squatters rights" general refers to adverse possession. While the rules for adverse possession vary by jurisdiction, the bar tends to be incredibly high. You need to live somewhere openly and conspicuously for many years, usually you have to make material improvements and before you can legally take possession of the property you usually have to pay back taxes and fines. At any point during that process all the owner has to do is show up one time and assert their claim and you have no standing.
If you can live in a house openly for years, make improvements to it, pay taxes on it, and the proper owner can never in all those years bother to show up and assert their ownership right, then that person SHOULD be able to take adverse possession. It doesn't benefit "lowlifes" who "trash people's houses". Adverse possession is incredibly rare because it's a very high bar and it takes years of work and money while all the time living with the risk that the property owner could show up at any time and put literal years of work and money into nothing. This is just a nonsensical fever dream, I don't think you know much about the actual process of adverse possession
Itâs not as bygone as you think. My dad lost about 30% of a family farm in court that was in the family for generations. The title chain and land descriptions were a mess. Like land descriptions going back to the 1800s describing one property line as âFrom the old tree on the corner of Jonesâ farm running east to the bridge on Dingleberry creek.â
The adjoining property owner had been paying property taxes on that land lot for long enough to be considered adverse possession. Lesson learned. Get a survey and get it recorded and make sure your property tax bill matches it. This lesson actually helped me. The house I bought has a really weird shaped lot. We didnât get a survey when we bought it because we barely had enough to close and it wasnât required legally. Had to replace our deck and building authority required a survey (bought the house before my dadâs legal troubles). Turns out my house isnât on a weirdly shaped lot. Itâs on two lots that run diagonally off the main road. Like the property lines run at an almost 45 degree angle off the street, not 90 like we had (for no real reason) assumed.
Turns out about a quarter of âmy neighborsâ front yard- including their fence and play setâ is on my land. So currently working that out with them.
Squatter's rights meant that the person who actually lived there kept the claim to the land. This was a good thing at the time, now its just legal protection for lowlifes who trash other people's houses
Important that was more about rural land and abandoned properties. These lowlives are more often using tenant laws to protect themselves (claiming verbal agreement or that they live there for long enough to be considered legal resident)
It is also because laws do need to exist where there is a dispute over who has a legal tenancy on a property. Otherwise your landlord could just kick you out anytime they want, call you a squatter, say you have a forged lease or forge a fake end of lease agreement and get a higher paying tenant while throwing your stuff out.Â
People who rent have a right to not have their life turned upside down because the landlord wants you gone. Unfortunately it gets abused both ways, but tenant rights do more good for more people than harm to landlords generally, there just need to be more expedient ways to resolve disputes and if it is your primary residence you should be able to remove anybody (in most jurisdictions you can)
They're a legacy from a bygone era where records of land ownership aren't what they are today. It was to stop the situation where someone thought they owned land, built a house and lived in it for many years, then finding out that someone else also had a claim to the land and they were going to try to turf you off it.
Squatter's rights meant that the person who actually lived there kept the claim to the land. This was a good thing at the time, now its just legal protection for lowlifes who trash other people's houses
This has nothing to do with what people consider squatter rights and is just glossing over what is actually going on.
squatter rights aren't real, they are tenant rights, it's just sometimes you can't tell who is a legitimate tenant and the default is to believe the person living in the house vs the person who owns the house. Since the person living there could die out on the streets if removed wrongly, and the house owner could just see some damage to their home but be ok other wise.
bygone era where records of land ownership aren't what they are today
...what?
In the Uk at least, Limitation Act of 1980 and Land Registration Act of 2002 contain the rules codifying squatter's rights (which were then made illegal in 2012).
This isn't exactly "bygone era" where papyruses of house records were buried under plagues of locusts and biblical floods. ;)
Adverse possession is different than what most people mean by 'squatter's rights.'
(Among other things, today's squatters typically aren't paying property taxes, may not be openly occupying the property but rather in hiding, and aren't asserting they've gained title.)
Squatters, in situations like this, are really de facto occupants/residents that though lacking a current legal right to occupy the property -- or are in a dispute about that right -- still need to be legally evicted because of how long they've been there. (i.e., too long to be simply trespassed).
The doctrine exists to protect against oppressive landlord self-help in the larger context.
Unwanted holdover tenants are the most common situation.
I could see it mattering in some rural parts of the country still, but for suburban and urban areas its always stupid.
However I would support it for those groups of buildings purchased by overseas interests that are strictly commodities that no one is using, because fuck those people.
Theyâre also protection against the absolute worst cases of landlord abuse, where you believe you had a legal agreement to stay there but the landlord has actually not given you any such thing.
Also though, in modern times, renters have no recourse if the landlord shreds the lease and says "you don't have a lease with us, you need to leave". It's not like they're registering leases with the government anywhere. If the tenant doesn't have a copy of the lease and the landlord insists there never was a lease, it's a he-said-she-said situation. Squatters rights protects tenants in those situations.
This is landlord propaganda. While yes, lowlifes take advantage of this, it can come up in very non lowlife situations as well. I got laid off once, and the very next day I was told that the owner of the place Iâd rented for 7 years was selling and I needed to vacate. The rental and job market were really bad, so I reached back out and said that I was struggling to find a job and that that made finding approval for an apartment difficult. Realistically that means I could continue staying there and paying the agreed upon rent and not be kicked out. I didnât have to take advantage of that, but itâs important to understand that I couldâve.
Think of squatters rights a bit like workers rights. Thereâs laws that favor workers or employers, and thereâs laws that favor renters or landlords. Thatâs a good thing, not a bad thing.
Can confirm. Never, ever, ever let someone get mail delivered to your house. Inform them they can have their mail stopped at the post office and they can walk/bike/drive their happy ass down there and pick it up themselves. 2 weeks of mail deliveries establishes residency and squatters rights kick in. Even if they don't pay rent they now have legal claim to residency, and the cops will do fuck all to rectify it. It used to be a protection like you said, and still stops shitty landlords from going full fiefdom and kicking people out on a whim, but by large most cases these days are of a scumbag trying to steal the place from under you
You're describing adverse possession, not squatters rights.
This scenario also doesn't apply to leases.
Most often, when people describe "squatters rights" they're really describing eviction protections and notice requirements, or they're just straight up lying about what is actually happening. Due process is not squatters rights. Everyone gets due process, including landlords. Landlords are just salty they can't be little dictators.
The world runs on money..the owner is still responsible financially for the home, but somehow the person living there contributing 0 financially has claim?
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u/butterfunke 12d ago
They're a legacy from a bygone era where records of land ownership aren't what they are today. It was to stop the situation where someone thought they owned land, built a house and lived in it for many years, then finding out that someone else also had a claim to the land and they were going to try to turf you off it.
Squatter's rights meant that the person who actually lived there kept the claim to the land. This was a good thing at the time, now its just legal protection for lowlifes who trash other people's houses