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Squaters rights run amok in Texas


Beerball

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Where are the lenders?

 

They care more about reposessing a car with delinquent payments than they do a house?

 

 

They don't need to care. All they need to do is show within the next ten years (not three in most of these cases - the article got that wrong) clear title to the property. In the meantime, the squatters have to maintain the property (materially, financially, and legally) to show any right to it.

 

In other words, a dingbat who moves from Memphis to a $3M foreclosed mansion in Fort Worth with nothing resembling a legal right to the property still has to pay the property taxes, utilities, upkeep, etc., on the property, and actually live there, for ten years to have any claim on it. If, at 9 years and 11 months, the bank shows the property was deeded to them in foreclosure, they get the mansion...and the dingbat's just paid all the bank's property taxes for ten years with nothing to show for it.

 

Good plan.

 

And you can't just move in to a dead neighbor's house and suddenly have a claim on it. There's this thing called an "estate", and usually people called "heirs", who can very easily challenge any sort of squatters' rights.

 

People are idiots.

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They don't need to care. All they need to do is show within the next ten years (not three in most of these cases - the article got that wrong) clear title to the property. In the meantime, the squatters have to maintain the property (materially, financially, and legally) to show any right to it.

 

In other words, a dingbat who moves from Memphis to a $3M foreclosed mansion in Fort Worth with nothing resembling a legal right to the property still has to pay the property taxes, utilities, upkeep, etc., on the property, and actually live there, for ten years to have any claim on it. If, at 9 years and 11 months, the bank shows the property was deeded to them in foreclosure, they get the mansion...and the dingbat's just paid all the bank's property taxes for ten years with nothing to show for it.

 

Good plan.

 

And you can't just move in to a dead neighbor's house and suddenly have a claim on it. There's this thing called an "estate", and usually people called "heirs", who can very easily challenge any sort of squatters' rights.

 

People are idiots.

 

Especially if they get a couple buddies with baseball bats and go over to the house.

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One of my favorite bars I have been in my travels is a squatters bar in Berlin (Zapata's?). Some artist squatters took over an old bombed up building, put in 3 art galleries, 2 bars, a movie theater, coffee shop, some other stuff. German squatter law is if you live in a building 10 years it is yours. This place was thriving. There was a huge metal dragon over the main bar area- and it would shoot 10 foot flames over our heads. Some mexican ska thrash band was playing, beers were flowing, and the place was rocking. Good times

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They don't need to care. All they need to do is show within the next ten years (not three in most of these cases - the article got that wrong) clear title to the property. In the meantime, the squatters have to maintain the property (materially, financially, and legally) to show any right to it.

 

In other words, a dingbat who moves from Memphis to a $3M foreclosed mansion in Fort Worth with nothing resembling a legal right to the property still has to pay the property taxes, utilities, upkeep, etc., on the property, and actually live there, for ten years to have any claim on it. If, at 9 years and 11 months, the bank shows the property was deeded to them in foreclosure, they get the mansion...and the dingbat's just paid all the bank's property taxes for ten years with nothing to show for it.

 

Good plan.

 

And you can't just move in to a dead neighbor's house and suddenly have a claim on it. There's this thing called an "estate", and usually people called "heirs", who can very easily challenge any sort of squatters' rights.

 

People are idiots.

 

 

Did you read the article? These people are trying to play a loophole in the law. From the article:

 

"The schemes are hard to unravel because of a loophole in a state law that allows people to suddenly claim supposedly abandoned sections of property if no owner is on the spot to challenge such a claim. The law's intent was to help ranchers and others who had tended vacant land for years, so they could eventually gain legal ownership of the property. That's done by filing a document called an adverse possession affidavit with the county clerk.

 

But the law doesn't distinguish between a claim on a $27 section of sod and one on a $2.7 million mansion with an elevator, three master bedrooms, a five-car garage and a pond with fish in the back yard. File the proper paperwork, pay a $16 filing fee, keep up with the property taxes and live in the house three years or more, and even the courts may not be able to evict you.

 

Read more: http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/12/04/3568832/squatters-claim-more-than-8-million.html#ixzz1ffTBTz9L"

 

This is just another example of how unintended consequences feed too many lawyers.

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Did you read the article? These people are trying to play a loophole in the law. From the article:

 

"The schemes are hard to unravel because of a loophole in a state law that allows people to suddenly claim supposedly abandoned sections of property if no owner is on the spot to challenge such a claim. The law's intent was to help ranchers and others who had tended vacant land for years, so they could eventually gain legal ownership of the property. That's done by filing a document called an adverse possession affidavit with the county clerk.

 

But the law doesn't distinguish between a claim on a $27 section of sod and one on a $2.7 million mansion with an elevator, three master bedrooms, a five-car garage and a pond with fish in the back yard. File the proper paperwork, pay a $16 filing fee, keep up with the property taxes and live in the house three years or more, and even the courts may not be able to evict you.

 

Read more: http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/12/04/3568832/squatters-claim-more-than-8-million.html#ixzz1ffTBTz9L"

 

This is just another example of how unintended consequences feed too many lawyers.

 

I read the article.

 

Then I read the law. The article inaccurately summarizes it. There is no "loophole"...the law is what I said. You can't just move in to a vacant house and it's yours.

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