The practice of claiming free land or property is not a new one and people has been doing this since ages. If you check your history books, you will find countless such instances of adverse possession.
The practice of claiming free land or property isn’t something new. It is something that has been around for hundreds of years all over the world. If one opens a history book, there would be instances of free claiming of land and property mentioned over the pages since time immemorial to the present.
Similarly, in recent times millions of such vacant plots lie here and there unclaimed and unused waiting for someone to come over stake claim and put it to good use.
The main first step for you would be to identify the plot of land on which you would stake your claim. You need to be selective in this and undergo a bit of detective work in the process of your property identification.
An unclaimed property always has some signs which one can identify. Overgrown gates and gardens, shrub lands, unused garages, broken or bordered up windows, even unused commercial premises and industrial buildings can be examples of such signs.
Since such signs are never much obvious, you will surely miss them if you drive about instead of walking around your own neighborhood.
Once, you have identified a piece of land that looks promising, you need to do the registration Check next. So contact the Land Registry and find out if your piece of land is already registered, unregistered or in the Pending First application status.
In the first case, that is, in case it is registered there might be several meanings. While the owner might have died without having any relatives, it might also be that the relatives are not interested in the plot of land. Moreover, the owner might be living but settled abroad after abandoning this property.
If it remains unregistered, it basically means that it has never been registered before or simply put, it means there is no owner. Thus, it s the best plot for a free claim though your job of tracing the owner will become more difficult.
If the Land registry tells you that it is ‘Pending first Application’, they essentially mean that someone else has already beaten you to the land and claimed it before you. What you should do in such a case is let go of this plot of land and search yourself another unused and abandoned plot instead.
Once you have checked the registration status of a plot of property, you need to trace its original owner because whenever you go ahead to claim the land, you need to provide proof of your attempts to contact them.
It is helpful to ask the immediate neighbors regarding the owner’s information and if it is not much help the one can go ahead and check with local bodies such as the post office, electoral roles, newsagents, landlords, milkman and even the probate registry office in case he is already dead.
It is not mandatory for you to submit any documents to the local land registry office. However, it is always good if you keep proof of your claim start date. Hence, you might just draw up a document and thereafter ask two of your friends or neighbors to sign as witnesses.
Some little helpful things like putting up a ‘No Trespassing’ sign or a little fence help a long way and even get the original owner back quickly if there are any.
The process of adverse possession is long and the claiming period sometimes goes up to 10 - 12 years. What you can do meanwhile is either rent out the land or do things like holding boot sales and the like.
The immediate neighbors would be the most helpful in your efforts since nobody ever wants to live beside an unused, abandoned derelict having overgrown surroundings and garbage filled streams where there remains high chance of unwanted events taking place.
More information on adverse possession can be got from the countless CDs and booklets available openly in the market which talks about the various legislation rules and laws corresponding to the same. You can also contact the various private websites who are involved in undertaking the detective work required for digging out information about the original owner and his land.
So you can use all these facilities mentioned above in order to put your hands on a fine piece of free land.
For more information please visit http://www.freelandandproperty.co.uk. Find free property by visiting this site. You can visit here and find information regarding land registry.