Chapter 1: Real Property Characteristics, Legal Descriptions, and Property Use Flashcards
Appurtenance
Rights, privileges,
or improvements that belong to and pass with the land
Improvements
Additions to the land, such as buildings and landscaping.
Chattel/Personalty
AKA personal property - a right or interest in something of a temporary or movable nature. Includes anything not classed as real property
What document is used to transfer ownership?
Bill of Sale
Annexation
The process of attaching personal property to create a fixture
Severance
The process of real property becoming personal
Emblements
CROPS cultivated annually. Not automatically part of the sale.
What are the three physical characteristics of land?
- Nonhomogeneity/Uniqueness
- Immobility
- Indestructibility
What are 4 economic characteristics of land?
1. Scarcity: short supply/demand great 2. Modification: man made improvements to land and surrounding 3. Fixity: permanent investments - not liquid 4. Situs: location preference, or location from an economic rather than a geographic standpoint
Zoning is the most common example of which governmental right in land?
Police Power
Non-conforming Use
Allows continued use for zoning that was permissible under former rules, but new rules prohibits it.
What can be requested prior to construction if the addition to your property violates zoning?
A variance
Buffer Zone
An area of land separating one land use from another
Eminent Domain
The right of the government to take private property through public use - only time the government must compensate property owners
What is the highest priority lien on real property?
Property taxes
Escheat
Property reverts to the state when someone dies and has no will, heirs or kindred
If you have two parcels of land with a road across one parcel,
is the owner who crosses over the other’s land the dominant or servient estate?
Dominant Estate
Adverse Possession
AKA squatter’s rights. Property is acquired from rightful owner through hostile, visible or open, actual or notorious, continuous, and distinct for the statutory period.
Lis pendens
] A form of lawsuit has been filed against a property but not yet resolved in court
Metes and bounds
descriptions use terminal points and angles and always have a p.o.b. (point
of beginning)
Lot, block, and subdivision descriptions
derived from a recorded map called a plat
The Rectangular Survey System AKA the Government Survey System
Takes into consideration baselines, and meridians, townships, and sections
Greenfields
parcels of land that have never been developed.
Greyfields
are parcels of land capable of redevelopment.
Examples of greyfields include once viable buildings, like shopping malls and box stores tenants vacated and left as empty shells.
Brownfields
sites known or suspected to be hazardous that usually occupied by industrial manufacturers or chemical plants
Wetlands
also known as mires, swamps, or marshes, serve as a link between land and water,
where the water covers the soil or is present at or near the surface of the soil all year or for varying periods during the year. The Environmental Protection Agency regulates many wetlands.
