1. Principles and Practices of Real Estate - Interests, Planning & Zoning Flashcards
Land, along with its improvements, things attached to it, and the benefits, and interests included in its ownership.
Real Property.
The earth’s surface, subsurface to the center of the earth, the space overhead and the rights to each.
Land
Additions to the property that increase its value or enhance its appearce.
Improvement
Anything that is unattached and moveable, including intangible assets.
Personal property
Once moveable items attached to real property.
Fixtures
How, by attachment, something that was formerly personal property becomes real property.
Annexation
The process of separating a fixture from the real property.
Severence
- Intention of the person who attached the item
- Method of attachment/annexation
- Adaptation of the item to the use of the property
- Relationship and general understanding between parties
Legal tests for a fixture to determine if it’s real or personal property
Things that “belong to something else, generally by attachment, include rights that “run with the land”.
Appurtenances
Cultivated crops that a tenant generally owns as personal property and may return to harvest even after the lease expires.
Emblements
Describes a distinct property’s boundary by identifying a point of beginning (POB) then describing the distances and directions along the property line around the entire property back to the POB.
Metes and Bounds
Describes particular parcels in a subdivision, so combine a metes and bounds description of distances between specific monuments or reference points and unique parcel identifier within the subdivision.
Lot and Block
Everything one owns, including real and personal property.
Estate
Ownership of something, along with evidence of ownership, e.g. a deed.
Title
Owned property (may have restrictions on transfer)
Freehold
Leased property
Leasehold
Title free of restrictions that would limit its transfer
Absolute/Clear/Good Title
A common illustration of property ownership that compares the entire set of ownership rights to a bundle of sticks. Each stick represents a separate, distinct ownership right. As any stick is given over to someone else, the absolute and complete ownership is increasingly limited by those who control a stick.
Bundle of (Legal) Rights
Absolute and complete ownership of real property
Fee simple
Conveys an estate for the duration of the life tenant.
Life Estate.
The right to acquire the estate upon its termination as a life estate.
Future Interests
A type of future interest, where the estate reverts to, or is returned to the grantor of the life estate.
Reversion (interest)
A type of future interest where the grantor of the life estate has named someone else to take title.
Remainder (interest)
Alienation
Transfer of property
Deeding, assigning, dedicating, willing are examples of
Voluntary transfer
Proof of ownership of real property, needed to transfer Real property
Deed
Transfers personal property
Bill of Sale
The donation of private property for public use
Dedication
Having a will
Testate
A person dies without a valid will
Intestate
The public, legal process of executing the terms outlined in a will.
Probate
The distribution of an estate that is not governed by a will, and follows applicable laws of descent and distribution (or devise and descent) for intestacy.
Intestate Succession
The process of property reverting to the government in the event someone dies intestate and with no heirs.
Escheat
Real property disposed of in a will
Devise
The recipient of real property disposed of in a will
Devisee
Personal property disposed of in a will
Legacy/Bequest
The recipient of personal property disposed of in a will
Legatee
Any situation where title transfers in a manner that the owner may not have any control over, or would generally prefer not to have happen.
Involuntary transfer/Involuntary alienation
A court-ordered sale of a property with multiple owners, one of more of which cannot get the others to buy their interest and so petition the court to force a sale in order to receive their share of the proceeds.
Partition
Creditors force the sale of a property in default of a loan or arrears in taxes in order to repay the debt.
Foreclosure
The order of repayment to creditors with the sale proceeds.
Priority of Liens
The owner of the property that is being put up as collateral
Mortgagor
The lender, personal or institutional, that finances the loan
Mortgagee
An individual is the owner of a property
Severalty, sole ownership, tenancy in severalty
Ownership by two or more parties at the same time
Concurrent Ownership or Co-Ownership
Parties hold an undivided fractional interest in the property.
Tenancy in common
A type of co-ownership
Parties hold an undivided equal interest in the property.
Joint tenancy
A type of co-ownership
- Unity of Interest
- Unity of possession
- Unity of time
- Unity of title
Four unities for creating a joint tenancy
As each individual in a joint tenancy passes away, the remaining tenants’ interest would increase until the last remaining person becomes the sold owner.
Right of Survivorship
part of Joint tenancy
A type of ownership that generally refers to multiple owners having an overlapping, inseparable interest in a property complex. (Seen in condos and timeshares)
Common interest ownership
Fee simple title to a unit and undivided interest in the jointly owned common areas as tenants in common.
Condominium Ownership
A (condo) developer’s organisational plans.
Includes a copy of the bylaws, legal descriptions and surveys, and restrictive covenants.
A declaration
A fee simple ownership of interval occupancy of a specified unit, conveys a contractual fixed-year, recurring use of a specified unit.
Timeshare ownership
Government ownership of the seabed stretching from the mean high water mark/line outward for 12 nautical miles.
Crown Right/Queen’s Bottom
The intertidal zone, from the lowest to the highest level reached by waves
Queen’s Foreshore
Docks or other structures that extend over and/or beyond the foreshore, generally ending over the seabed in navigable water.
Foreshore encroachments
Leases and licences for the foreshore and seabed issued by the Ministry of Public Works’ Department of Public Lands and Buildings, generally for 21 years.
Foreshore leases
Police power, taxation, eminent domain, escheat
The four governmental powers
The government’s authority to provide for the general welfare of the community through legislation and a range of enabling acts, or enabling statutes, that authorize agencies to organize and both implement and enforce their obligations.
Police power
A type of police power under which municipalities can regulate land use.
Zoning
A property continuing a prior use after a zoning change
Nonconforming use
Allows for a use other than the primary zoning category, granted after review by the zoning authorities.
A Variance
Allows for a use other than the primary zoning category but more more restrictive and requires a permit.
A conditional/special use
A parcel or small area of land in question is actually rezoned to allow it to co-exist within an area of different zoning requirements.
Spot Zoning
The specified distance a building must be from a property line.
Setback
An area that serves to separate one use from another.
Buffer Zone
Municipal regulations government zoning and land-use reuirements
Zoning orders
Governed by zoning orders and outline the requirements for construction standards.
Building codes
A governmental power necessary to raise revenue for municipal expenses.
Taxation
The assessed value real property is assigned by the municipal government’s assessor’s office used as a basis for annual taxation for general assessments which raise funds for the entire municipality.
Annual Rental Value (ARV)
General real estate taxes, taxed “at value”
Ad valorem taxes
The taking of a title of real property for some use, public or private that has been judged by the appropriately authorised governmental entity to be beneficial to the community’s interest.
Eminent Domain or Compulsory Purchase
Non-ownership interests, monetary and non-monetary that represent restriction on the use and/or transfer of real property.
Encumbrances
A monetary encumbrance that asserts the lienholder has a creditor’s claim to a specific monetary interest in the property’s value.
Lien
Recording a document provides a due diligence review of the record that would make the existence of the document known to the reviewer.
Constructive notice or Legal notice
A party has received the notice, as when a party has to sign for the delivery of a document or a process server subpoena to appear in court.
Actual notice
Property liens placed by those that supplied labour or materials for property improvements and went unpaid.(involuntary specific)
Mechanic’s liens
A lien that affects all of a debtor’s property and assets
General lien
A lien that is limited to a specified item controlled by the debtor.
Special lien
Liens that result from property financing (voluntary specific)
Mortgage lien
Liens that result from unpaid taxes (involuntary general)
Property tax lien
Liens that result from a court order to pay a certain amount to a creditor (involuntary general)
Judgment lien
Interests in land that give another non-owner right to use the property for a specific purpose, generally to cross over it.
Easements
The right to use one property for the benefit of another one. E.g. a right of way.
Appurtenant easement
An appurtenant easement when an owner sells a landlocked parcel of larger property, and the owner needs to cross over another to get to the road.
Easement by/of necessity
The property that must allow access to another on a landlocked parcel of land.
Servient tenement/estate
The landlocked property that “commands” the benefit of access over another.
Dominent tenement/estate
An easement when there is only one servient tenement (e.g. a utilities easement/pass-through; or easements for personal use)
Easement in Gross
Easements when owners allow others to use their land without a specific arrangement and lose the right to stop that use if it becomes protected by law after legal action.
Prescriptive Easement
A common building wall or a stand-alone wall either on or at a property line, and involves both owners in ownership, maintenance and/or access issues.
Party Wall Easements
- Mutual Agreement (express/implied)
- Necessity
- Longtime Use
How creation of easements may arise
- Abandonment
- Release of Easement
- Conclusion of Easement
- Merger of the dominant and servient estates
How termination of easements may arise
A personal, revokable right/privilege granted by an owner to someone else to use the property, typically in a brief, limited way.
License
A special type of encumbrance that involve some form of overlapping use of one property by another.
Unauthorised and/or illegal infringements that can affect a title’s marketability.
Encroachment
When a portion of a building crosses the poperpty line
Tresspass
When tree limbs or a roofline extend across a property boundary
Nuisance
Determines the accurate location and dimensions of property boundary lines
Property survey
When some form of litigation against the property is pending (that may become the responsibility of a new owner to address).
Lis pendens
Rights do not end when a new owner takes title.
“Run with the Land”
A foreclosure type means by a legal action in court that results in a sale by court order or writ of execution
Judicial
a foreclosure type which means that things proceed according to contract terms alone.
Non-judicial
AKA Annexation and includes additions to the property from natural causes (e.g. a shift in river for a riverfront property) and artificial causes (e.g. new buildings or plantings on property)
Accession
If the proceeds of a foreclosure sale do not cover all property liens the creditors may be able to seek ___???
Deficiency Judgment
A joint tenancy may become a tenancy in common through ___?
Severance
Who is responsible for paying taxes on a condo?
The condo owner
Governmental powers take effect automatically, without any action, knowledge, or approval required of the owner
Operation of Law
____? May be resolved by?
- Selling the property
- Deeding the use as an easement
Encroachment (resolution)
