Chapter 1: Real Property Characteristics, Legal Descriptions, and Property Use

Question 1

Appurtenance

Answer 1

Rights, privileges,

or improvements that belong to and pass with the land

Question 2

Improvements

Answer 2

Additions to the land, such as buildings and landscaping.

Question 3

Chattel/Personalty

Answer 3

AKA personal property - a right or interest in something of a temporary or movable nature. Includes anything not classed as real property

Question 4

What document is used to transfer ownership?

Answer 4

Bill of Sale

Question 5

Annexation

Answer 5

The process of attaching personal property to create a fixture

Question 6

Severance

Answer 6

The process of real property becoming personal

Question 7

Emblements

Answer 7

CROPS cultivated annually. Not automatically part of the sale.

Question 8

What are the three physical characteristics of land?

Answer 8

1. Nonhomogeneity/Uniqueness
2. Immobility
3. Indestructibility

Question 9

What are 4 economic characteristics of land?

Answer 9

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

Question 10

Zoning is the most common example of which governmental right in land?

Answer 10

Police Power

Question 11

Non-conforming Use

Answer 11

Allows continued use for zoning that was permissible under former rules, but new rules prohibits it.

Question 12

What can be requested prior to construction if the addition to your property violates zoning?

Answer 12

A variance

Question 13

Buffer Zone

Answer 13

An area of land separating one land use from another

Question 14

Eminent Domain

Answer 14

The right of the government to take private property through public use - only time the government must compensate property owners

Question 15

What is the highest priority lien on real property?

Answer 15

Property taxes

Question 16

Escheat

Answer 16

Property reverts to the state when someone dies and has no will, heirs or kindred

Question 17

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?

Answer 17

Dominant Estate

Question 18

Adverse Possession

Answer 18

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.

Question 19

Lis pendens

Answer 19

] A form of lawsuit has been filed against a property but not yet resolved in court

Question 20

Metes and bounds

Answer 20

descriptions use terminal points and angles and always have a p.o.b. (point
of beginning)

Question 21

Lot, block, and subdivision descriptions

Answer 21

derived from a recorded map called a plat

Question 22

The Rectangular Survey System AKA the Government Survey System

Answer 22

Takes into consideration baselines, and meridians, townships, and sections

Question 23

Greenfields

Answer 23

parcels of land that have never been developed.

Question 24

Greyfields

Answer 24

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.

Question 25

Brownfields

Answer 25

sites known or suspected to be hazardous that usually occupied by industrial manufacturers or chemical plants

Question 26

Wetlands

Answer 26

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.