The Law That Lets You Legally Steal Houses - YouTube

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Here at Half as Interesting, we take a firm stance against assault, arson, kidnapping,

adults napping on subway benches, pickles, slow walkers, referring to travelators as

moving walkways, people using the iPhone alarm sound as their ringtone, nuclear proliferation,

the under toiler paper orientation, wind faster than 15 miles per hour, murder, mosquitos,

referring to personal flotation devices as life jackets, Bombardier CRJ200’s, square

earthers, 3D movies, crocs, the lack of video editing function on YouTube, under-hydration,

and stealing.

Well, maybe I should be more specific.

Here at Half as Interesting, we don’t condone stealing when it’s illegal.

When stealing is legal, on the other hand, I mean, go for it.

You see, there are times when stealing someone’s house can be totally, 100% legal.

If you’re wondering how, allow me to introduce you to a little something called “adverse

possession.”

Adverse possession, commonly called squatter’s rights, is a legal process whereby a person

trespassing on someone else’s property, if they stay there long enough, actually becomes

the legal owner of that property.

In other words, if the trespasser trespasses long enough, they not only become not a trespasser,

they also become the owner.

It would be like saying that if you pretended you own a country for long enough, you would

actually end up owning that country—*cough* Britain.

Now, in what is the least surprising thing since the violation of the treaty of Versailles,

adverse possession, the principle of sitting on land long enough until you own it, derives

from old English common law.

See, back in ye olde days, when lands were constantly being conquered and pillaged and

stolen, it was often hard to know who legally owned property.

So instead of figuring it out, the courts kind of just shrugged and decided that if

someone had managed to live on a piece of property for long enough, they were probably

its rightful owner.

Somehow those laws have continued to exist until today—in several formerly or presently

crumpet consuming countries, including England, Australia, and the United States, adverse

possession remains the law of the land.

Today, adverse possession is usually used for minor land disputes between neighbors.

For example, if you have a fence that technically goes a bit into your neighbor’s property,

and you’ve maintained that area for several years, it’s possible you can claim it through

adverse possession.

But in some cases it can be used for much more than that, with squatters successfully

using it to claim entire houses as their own.

Now, I’d like to welcome you to the segment called, “HAI’s Super Cool, Super Accurate

Legal Advice: I’m Not a Lawyer, This Isn’t Legal Advice, Please Don’t Sue Me.”

Before you get all excited and decide you’re going to steal your neighbor’s house, you

should know that there are five specific criteria that must be met in order for adverse possession

to work.

First, the possession must be “hostile.”

That doesn’t mean you have to invade with trebuchets, the gentleman’s weapon, but

it does mean that you must, in fact, be on the land without the owner’s permission—you

have to actually be trespassing.

Otherwise, for example, people who are renting or borrowing a house might be able to claim

ownership under adverse possession.

So, pro tip, put a sign up inviting anyone in and then nobody can claim adverse possession!

Criteria dos, the possession must be “actual.”

That means that not only must the trespasser actually be on the property, they also must

be using it as if it was their own, and actively maintaining it.

You have to be living there and doing the stuff that a normal homeowner would do—mending

the hedges, mowing the fences, watering the windows, taking out the lawn, weeding the

trash, the normal stuff.

Criteria number c, the possession it must be “open and notorious.”

In other words, you can’t be hiding the fact that you live there.

So don’t worry—if somebody is hiding in your attic for five years, they can’t suddenly

take you to court and claim that they own your house.

Open and notorious possession means that the trespasser must be living there clearly and

openly, in such a way that the real owner, if they were paying any attention at all,

would be able to know that they are there and kick them out.

Criteria number IV, the possession must be “exclusive.”

The person or people claiming the property must be the only ones living there.

The owner cannot be living on or using the property at any point; if they do, then your

claim is gone.

Which means that if you’ve been on a property for years waiting to take adverse possession,

if the real owner even stops by to use the bathroom, then the clock starts over again.

It is for this reason that in New York, for example, where there are plenty of privately

owned courtyards open to the public, many of these are barricaded off by their owners

once a year just to prove the owner’s domination of the land so that nobody can live on and

subsequently claim the courtyards.

And finally, criteria number cinq, the possession must be “continuous.”

You must continuously live on the property for a certain period of time.

That doesn’t mean you can never leave—you can go to the grocery store or on a normal

vacation—but you must be using the property the way that a normal property owner would.

You can’t go to an abandoned house once or twice over several years and then claim

it.

How long you have to live there depends on the state or nation’s laws.

It could be as short as five or as long as forty years.

But once you reach that magic number—boom, you own the place…

assuming you succeed in proving you meet the criteria in a complex and expensive legal

process.

Nonetheless, people successfully apply the law of adverse possession all the time in

the countries where it exists—often fixing up and living in abandoned buildings.

Now, if you become an adverse possession master you might end up with quite a few houses and

they’d be safe because you’d probably have a different key to each house.

That way if you lose a key, only one of your houses would be compromised rather than all.

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