i have been thinking about this. there is a house where i live in the country side it has been empty for over 10 years and the owner never comes around. would it be possible to own the house one day with squatter’s rights? people have told me you can do this. i live in CA how does this work? what would the steps be to do this ? thanks
Wouldn’t that depend on whether the owner is staying current with property taxes and mowing/maintaining the house? No law against owning a house and leaving it empty, as long as taxes are being paid and the property doesn’t descend into blight.
Where I live, if taxes are delinquent for three years, the county gets the house and usually sells it at auction. I know someone who was renting a house but his landlady stopped paying taxes. He ended up getting the house for $1400 (the cost of the back taxes) which he paid off at $100 per month.
In America, it is rough. Adverse possession is the proper name. You have to live in the house for a long time, not hide it at all, and make improvements. Details differ from state to state.
If interested you should go to the county clerk, and see what you can find out. Owners mailing address, last time taxes paid, ect.
Edit - just saw this is California. Clerk probably won’t tell you anything. You might ask a real estate a gent to look it up. It seems there are tons of abandoned houses in Cali. Somebody told me it is some sort of tax write off for rich people, but I do not understand how that could work.
[quote=“chiroptera, post:2, topic:691676”]
Wouldn’t that depend on whether the owner is staying current with property taxes and mowing/maintaining the house? No law against owning a house and leaving it empty, as long as taxes are being paid and the property doesn’t descend into blight.
the house is not being maintained most of the windows are broken out and weeds are growing everywhere. there is another house on the same property it is about to fall down. roof caving in. holes in the floors and walls
There was a whole long thread a few months ago about adverse possession. It works in some states, not others. To obtain title through squatters rights, you have to effectively take over the house an live in it, to the exclusion of the owner, typically for 10 years. There’s a series of criteria - open, continuous, adverse, notorious, intentional, etc. IANAL and someone will chime in about this.
However, basically you need to live there and use it as if it is your own, for everyone to see. (Notorious), to the exclusion of the real owner and others (Adverse). Somewhere between 10 and 20 years of this without being successfully evicted by the real owner, may give you the right to claim title.
basically, if the real owner had plenty of time to figure out what was going on and did not know or bother to find out and do anything about it, then you get possession. As an owner, you could pay taxes for 10 years and then discover someone was living there the whole time (you did not know) and lose title. One key point is “occupy”. Pay taxes is not occupying. Visiting for a few weeks a year is o continuous occupation. And so on…
Read this.
If taxes are being paid, it is not abandoned. If taxes have not been paid for a certain number of years, depending upon the state, the county will sell it for unpaid taxes at a public sale. If nobody bids, it is forfeited to the state. It depends upon your local laws, but you will, at the minimum, have to pay all the back taxes. No need for adverse possession if taxes have not been paid. Just bid at the annual sales the county holds on forfeited taxes. Laws in states differ: usually to the highest bidder, and for the owner (or prior owner) to redeem, he or she will have to pay the purchase price plus interest as mandated by statute. It is the practice in large counties to have professional tax buyers who purchase land to obtain the high interest rates dictated by the statute. They get among themselves and decide who is going to bid on what property so that the purchase prices are nominal, with no competition.
Googling, we find there have been numerous earlier threads on this subject as well.
I live in a country where squatting is rampant, both on land owned by individuals and owned by the government, AND unlike the USA it is easier to actually get the land.
It is a total clusterfuck, various political parties have courted squatter’s votes and introduced crap like letters of comfort. People sell these like deeds, which doesn’t make any sense at all.
Nobody really cares about land getting stolen from the government, but with individuals you can have the deed holder, multiple letters of comfort holders, people who have purchased letters of comfort, and who is actually in the house! Just a giant mess.
I prefer the USA approach.
I recall a story I read about a lady in Greece who rented a house to an immigrant. She stopped getting rent, went over to see what was going on, and found the house was full with a dozen or more foreign (illegal?) immigrants. When she demanded rent, they told her to get lost and there was nothing she could do. She went to the police, who declined to get involved. A friend told her to go see the Golden Dawn party. Apparently a dozen of them went to visit the house armed with assorted clubs and other weapons, and “suggested” the occupants vacate, and offered to escort them off the premises. The lady got her house back.
Right-wing fascists appear to be useful in a society in some situations when the regular authorities decline to enforce the rule of law.