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Comment by pavel_lishin | Hacker News Reader

How did you come to own a house that's built on land you don't own? And aren't you worried about what may happen in the future?

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It's quite common (in the UK) to have properties that haev a leasehold but not freehold.

Generally speaking leases are cheap and long (100 years?) and get renewed decades before the lease term ends. It does reduce the property value a little.

It happens here in the US in Washington, too, with houses on Indian reservations owned by people who are not part of the tribe. They have long leases (around 100 years) on the land, and own the house on top of the land.

The terms of the leases typically require that the lessee return the land to its original condition when the lease expires, which means demolishing or moving the house and replanting appropriate vegetation, but I've read that usually the tribe will accept the lessee leaving and turning the house over to the tribe.

If you are ever buying a house in Washington and see something that seems too good to be true, like a beachfront house at a low price, look carefully for something about a land lease. The practice of leasing land from tribes and building houses on it goes back a long way, and some of the early leases are expiring in a few years.

Quite common here in Norway as well, especially for cabins and holiday homes. Interestingly, as recently as 2012, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled that landowners were allowed to change the terms of land leases when they came up for renewal, overruling the national supreme court [1]. Before that, they were obliged to offer the exact same terms, adjusted only for inflation.

[1] http://www.newsinenglish.no/2012/06/13/lease-holders-now-on-...

On a hundred year bond, "adjusted for inflation" can already be a nasty surprise (5% inflation a year over a century gives you about a 2^7 multiplication factor, or two zeroes)

Why would that be a nasty surprise? The real value is unchanged. Unless you're saying the adjustment only happens at renewal, and not annually?

Often that's the case and in some countries you typically owe the whole value for the next 40 years when it's renewed. Of course it could be absorbed in the mortgage.

I've noticed this when looking for apartments in New York.

When you see an especially cheap apartment that has nothing obviously wrong with it when you look at the pictures, it's one of these three things:

1) The building doesn't own the land it's built on.

2) The current owner is renting it to a rent-controlled tenant who refuses to leave until they die.

3) Maintenance fees are $3000 a month for a studio due to severe mismanagement or something.

When I was in the UK recently I remember seeing ads for 999 year leaseholds. I thought that was very strange: like you kinda own it but kinda don't.

Leaseholds that long usually come with a share of the freehold.

This is not uncommon. In China, the government owns all of the land and grants long-term leases to people. It happens stateside, too. For example, all of the land in Irvine, California is (was?) owned by the Irvine Company and the people living on it own the structures but lease the land.

Very much is. As well as a lot of other cities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irvine_Company says that the company owns about 1/5 of Orange County. Including several cities.

One of those cities is Anaheim, so that suggests that Disney is leasing the land for Disneyland from the Irvine Company!

Not sure on that. It specifies Anaheim Hills. Anaheim proper seems like it might be outside the listed areas. That said, maybe? Seems like it would be publicly obvious.

You are right. Reading closely, they only own some of Anaheim.

Curiously, many cities are organised as corporations, though I'm not entirely sure of the specifics of this. I don't believe most lay claim to the land within their boundaries.

Historically, residents/property owners have often chosen to form a municipal corporation which basically creates a layer of government.

In the case of the Irvine Company, it's the descendant of the Irvine Ranch which never sold off most of its land holdings.

The story of the development of the Los Angeles basin is an interesting one that I've been going through over the past few days. "Why does Los Angeles even exist?" being one question. "Why did it out-grow San Francisco?" being another.

The 1906 quake and topography likely had a lot to do with it. Just at the time the Westward migration really started in earnest, San Francisco burnt down, and LA didn't have to build any bridges to get between places.

Mix up some oil and water for added fun.

Certain lakes around where I live are owned by the Army Corp of Engineers.

You can get a 100 year lease on the land you want and it's usually renewed with out hassle. I'm sure there are exceptions.

Along the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania, there are hundreds of cabins, some now turned into year-round homes, that are on land leased in the early 1900's. In recent years, a number of issues have arisen to change the lease requirements and renewal terms. At least 100 of these properties are on land that has been given to conservation groups by the power company and those leases are not being renewed and the cabins are, slowly due to court battles, being razed.

When the dams were built they forced a few towns to relocate since they would be underwater. It's only relative.

Where were the leaseholders when the decision was made to give the land away? Was it Army Corp land or Power company land?

It's common in the US, and institutionalized to the point that the homeowner is in no danger of the 'landlord' revoking the lease. It is frequently historical and in such cases most states require by law the landholder to 'sell' the land to the homeowner on request, usually for a trifling sum. The term for this in the mid-Atlantic is "ground rent," if you want to look for more info.

The real question (in Europe at least) is why the church and "nobility" are allowed to keep their land that has often been obtained by dubious means.

If you look back far enough, a huge amount of the land we live on was obtained by violence, theft, or deception. If the first person in the chain of ownership got it by dubious means, they had no right to sell it, and nor did the next person, and so on. By convention, we don't look that far back and ask people to prove their right to ownership. Further back than time immemorial[1] and it's just accepted without further justification.

As for royalty and the church, the United Kingdom is not a republic: it's a constitutional monarchy with an established church (the church is part of the state and the monarch is head of the church).

There may come a time when the church is disestablished (against the wishes of the antidisestablishmentarians — never thought I'd have a chance to use that word on Hacker News) and the monarchy abolished, but for the moment that's what we have and there's no real justification for "removing" the property of either.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_immemorial

What's this established church of the UK?

As jacalata said, it's the Church of England, the Anglican Church. If you're American, you might be more familiar with the word Episcopalian, which is the American branch of the Anglican Communion, a community of Anglican Churches in various countries around the world.

Historically, England (and I'm talking about England here, not Scotland, which has a different arrangement) was a Catholic country, until the Pope wouldn't give Henry VIII a divorce. He created the Church of England with himself as its head.

Anglicanism is a broad church with some congregations that are basically similar to Catholicism (outside of the Roman Catholic church) with the ritual and ceremony — High Church congregations — and some which which are Protestant.

The Queen is the head of the Church of England, and the Archbishop of Canterbury is the senior priest. Senior members of the Church of England have the right to sit the the House of Lords, which is the second chamber of the British Parliament, so as you can see, the Church, the Monarchy (which is nominally the executive), and the legislature are all tied together — that's what it means to have an established church.

edit: messed up the Roman numerals

Henry VIII. May want to fix :-)

Thanks!

The Church of England, of course! You may have heard of them as Anglicans. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_England. Edit: technically not established for the whole UK, probably.

The C of E is definitely not the established church in Scotland (in fact we don't have an established church - the Church of Scotland is pretty well independent of the state).

Then there is Wales, and last but definitely not least when it comes to complicated religious issues, Northern Ireland.

The Lords Spiritual of the CofE are members of the House of Lords, which is part of the UK parliament, and not an England-only house.

Unlike the other nations, England doesn't have any independent government, so it doesn't really make sense to say that the CofE is the established church of England alone, because there is no English establishment for it to be part of.

So, the CofE is the (only) established church in and of the of UK. The fact that The Kirk and The Church in Wales are not established just means that the only bishops that get to interfere with everyone else's business are from English bishoprics.

I can appreciate that argument about the Lords Spiritual - but I can't see how the C of E can be the established religion outside of England.

NB Wikipedia would appear to agree with me:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_religion

You appear to be right, although it doesn't make sense (like a lot of things here, so it's not that much of a surprise). How can a nation without a government have an established religion?

My father was from Ulster, and I have a photo of him leading the marching band leading an Orange parade. I also have a confirmation certificate verifying that he's a good Presbyterian who "is loyal to the Queen and loves God"... I thought the ordering of monarch before deity was particularly telling.

Disestablishment would just remove the CoE's official status with the state. The church would continue to exist and own its property. Likewise, the monarch's family would still own theirs after the abolition of the monarchy. This assumes it isn't stolen by an unjust law or a revolution, of course.

Much of the land in America that's not owned by the indigenous population has been obtained by dubious means.

Generally, might makes right.

Many of whom obtained it by dubious means from different tribes of indigenous peoples.

Because the "commoners" haven't organized in UK to take them away and because the "church" and "nobility" control the establishment that makes and enforces laws. Establishment derived politicians have largely managed to sway public emotions through appeals to tradition and nostalgia for the empire.

In many other parts of the world the property of the nobility was largely taken away - eg. in India a few decades after independence in the 1970s - though the smarter kings managed to retain some control by sensing which way the wind was blowing early and turning into businessmen amd politicians. One strategy used was to endow property to "public" trusts, take controlling board seats and starting businesses contracted by these trusts to extract the income.

Where would we find land that wasn't obtained by "dubious means" at some point in its history?

The first humans, maybe?

Almost all land in America that's not owned by the indigenous population has been obtained by dubious means.

Generally, might makes right.

I don't know about the rest of the UK but here in Scotland if you build property on someone else's land the property belongs to them (NB I've never seen a leasehold in Scotland but feudalism was only officially abolished a few years back!).

In Germany, too. A house and the land on which it stands do not form distinct properties but only one, the reasoning is they are physically connected and the house cannot be separated from the land while still being used as a house.

The GDR had in the years of its existence softened this doctrine due to its ideological despice for property in general and their conception of public property (sort of modern fief: delegation of usage rights) in particular. Under this conception it was possible to have separate ownership in buildings. This was more or less a incentive and financing game: let the populace build the buildings out of their own savings, and as long we have not abolished property altogether, they might as well own the buildings.

However the land registration (Grundbuch) normally includes the buildings. This was however handled differently for different types of buildings. Apartment houses were more properly documented, smaller buildings (holiday homes, garages) nearly never. This was a big problem after reunification, because buying a realty, one could not be sure if there remained rights from third parties to the buildings on the realty.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkseigentum#Sachenrechtsbere...

It makes some sense from a practical standpoint. It would get pretty sticky if your tenant built a house and then demanded you stay away from it even after the rental agreement lapsed.

There's also such a thing as "mineral rights", which is separate from land ownership. Hereabouts (Western WA), a lot of land that is built up used to be logged, and the companies that did, like Weyerhauser, often still hold mineral rights after selling off the land.

Nobody really owns the land their house is built on in the USA... stop paying your property taxes (rent) and you'll see who owns it.

I suppose you can think of that way. But consider that the reason you are able to "own" any property is because there is a legal system in place(1). In someplace without an operating rule of law, a warlord could easily take "your" property.

Even if you're a King, if you stop paying your knights/army you probably won't hold on to your lands for much longer. Would you say (A) the army "owns" the king's land or (B) the army just makes it possible for him to continue owning it?

(1) Unless you are a Law unto yourself i.e. have your own army.

It's not just a way of thinking about it - it's the actual legal arrangement. In pretty much every state today, you don't own any land (unless you're a monarch, or a noble with an ancient allodial title) - you own an estate in land, but the government (or the monarch in person) owns the actual land.

you used to be able to get a thing called an allodial title, but it's basically extinct now.

This is such a tired claim. Every civilization ever has been built under the aegis of, if no one else, each other.

Of course you own it. The question is what "ownership" means. Ownership of a property is best defined by delineating the specific rights that you can exercise with respect to it. You may bar people from entering it. You might not be able to bar the government from entering it or making certain uses of it. There's a good chance you can't keep people from being underneath your house and extracting valuable minerals, if they're far enough down. Your rights don't extend very far above the earth.

But you knew all that when you made the purchase.

> There's a good chance you can't keep people from being underneath your house and extracting valuable minerals

6ft in my (Commonwealth) country.

Have always found it cool that ordinary Americans operate their own oil wells on their (sometimes small) properties.

> But you knew all that when you made the purchase.

and you didn't have any other options.

There's this underlying assumption that people seem to have that they have an absolute right to have absolute control over some piece of land. I'm really confused where that comes from. Was it that way in the past? I suppose, in various places and eras. But far more common was that you had enough power to deter the powerful around you, and you were for all intents and purposes a state. I can understand wanting to be a state, but you don't have a right to be one.

It's you, and you're in arrears on a tax obligation.

Did I get it right?

I don't owe any taxes, but finding the ones that do is a good way to find cheap properties...

  The land, the land,
  'twas God who made the land,
  The land, the land,
  The ground on which we stand,
  Why should we be beggars
  With the ballot in our hand?
  God gave the land to the people.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Land_(song)

Primary versus secondary property, sovereign and allodial versus infeudinated ownership. Different in autonomous kind due to a difference in degree of autarky.

You are right - I ran across this a few years ago which surprised me:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fee_simple

We all must pay service to our feudal lords.

It's not necessarily a bad thing - it's how you take a legacy system and adapt it to the new conditions without too much breakage. By making the government, in effect, the one and only feudal lord in its jurisdiction, and every land owner its vassal, the existing laws and precedent retain meaning, so you don't have to start from scratch - just change the things that need fixing.

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