Why Do Squatters Rights Exist? - How Money Works

The financial success of families, communities and countries are intertwined with real estate, which is why it seems silly that people can just take these homes and legally claim them as their own.

Squatters rights on the surface sound ridiculous.

#Squatters #RealEstate #HowMoneyWorks

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Music by Epidemic Sound

Stock footage by Storyblocks

[timkoglin]

Real estate attorney here who has filed these kind of cases. One small correction is that not every state requires you to have a reasonable belief that you own the land. This is actually the biggest variation (aside from the time element that you mentioned) from state to state.

[timbango]

What I want to know is how does someone breaking into my home while I'm away for a week, not breaking and entering?

[quixomega]

We fixed this issue in Canada, squatters have no rights. We've moved to electronic land registry systems, deeds do not exist and the deadline to register old deeds has expired.

[DHFlip]

The best way to beat squatter's rights laws is to squat on the property of judges and law enforcement.

[dane]

On the bright side, you don't have to deal with frustrating squatters in your house when you have no house!

[harenterberge]

In the Netherlands it used to be legal to squat a building that was standing empty for over a year. This came from the post war period were there was a huge shortage in homes, but at the same time speculators let buildings stay empty for a long time in the hope to sell them for a higher price later on.

However squatting didn't make you owner and if the original owner could make it plausible that they wanted to use the building again the squatters had to leave.

[alexcortez]

You can have vacation with your family for 3 weeks and come home to someone living in your house!? That's outrageous even for the third world country I live in! That's just trespassing ain't it?

[angelicarodriguez]

One question for me is why can’t people whose homes are taken over by squatters not just do the same to them? Wait for them to be gone, break in, change the locks, and if confronted just say you have no idea what they’re talking about. It’s a he said she said situation after all.

[stormichigura]

I'm from Texas. You're going to leave my house, or we're going to be on the news

[sheezy]

Too bad non of the squatters ever end up squatting in a politicians house. Then we will see how fast the police will react and how fast the laws protecting squatting rights will change.

[captrobmiller]

"How would you be able to prove you own the place?"

Well, every place I've ever lived in outside of my parents house, I either had a lease agreement or a mortgage contract...

[padesky]

My old man used to own quite a few rental properties. One time there was a tenant that just completely quit paying rent and was trying to claim squatters rights. My dad went to court to get them evicted but after about 6 months of still receiving no rent and the government dragging their feet on the eviction process, my dad gathered up a group of hard hitting motherf*ckers armed enough to supply a small army. They went over to the house and evicted the tenant themselves and took the rental back without incident. I guess sometimes you just have to take matters into your own hands.

[sheezy]

If you live in Australia you know how difficult it is to buy your first house. Yet some people thinking that they are somehow entitled to just move into someone else's house and there are laws to protect these criminals shows how broken the system is.

[knightmareco]

In my third world corrupt country we have cases of people who rent an apartment and then stop paying after 3 months, and kicking them out is a hassle because the law protects them due to the right of having a living place or something like that. Likewise we have professional land stealers, they come at night, build a 3x3 (meter) room and place a family inside with a kid and an elderly adult, since the law protects the elderly and the children, the land owner cannot kick them out or demolish the "building", rinse and repeat and after 2 weeks your have a complete slum full of squatters, most of them paid by the land stealer, after a couple of years they can claim ownership over the land, which is then given to then land stealer who proceeds to relocate the occupants and demolish the poorly built houses and then builds more profitable houses.

[qdllc]

A dark side similar to this involve property disputes. Some states put the burden on whomever brings the case to court. So, if you own land and someone infringes, and the burden is such, you can’t bring the case because you then must prove YOU own the land to assert your case. This incentivizes using force to push the person off your property and make THEM bring the case so THEY must prove they own the land.

[theondono]

In Spain this crap is so common and frustrating that I’ve designed “anti-squatters” lock doors.

[philko]

"If a police team busted into your home today and tried to kick you out, how would you definitely prove that you own the place and weren't just living in there as a squatter?"

are you actually serious?

how about SHOWING THEM A COPY OF THE RENTING AGREEMENT, SIGNED BY YOUR LANDLORD?!

[LadyViolet]

I guess this is why my landlord has a part in the lease saying to let them know if we're going to be gone for an extended period of time. I guess so they can check for squatters.

[jamisongillespie]

Yeah I realized the importance of this when I purchased a house and the satellite survey and county records seem to disagree with the fence line. Possibly a tiny piece of land that appears on my side of the fence may belong to the neighbor. Not a big deal, except part of a shed exists on part of that property. It would be cost prohibitive to move it and likely has existed since the 90s, so if my neighbor suddenly had a problem it likely would belong to my property due to squatters rights.

I can absolutely see after this experience why these laws are important. Exact property lines are not always well defined.

[the_real_swiper]

In Germany we have something called "Grundbucheintrag". In english translated, I guess "land register entry" and the owner of the home can only be changed by an official notary. Maybe this is something for the land of freedom?