History shows us that claiming free land has been going on since time immemorial. The task is to choose the right plot in order to claim. This article tells you how to claim effectively for free land.
The practice of staking claim on free land or property is not a new one. Our history books stand testimony to this fact and if you open the pages you will get innumerable such examples.
The new settlers who came to America can be sited as one of the best examples from history. These new settlers came and claimed the free property as their own, creating their own houses and farmland on it.
Coming back to the present it can be safely stated at this point that there exists millions of such unclaimed plots of land that are lying unregistered and unused waiting for someone to claim them.
The first step for you would be property identification where you need to identify a plot of land on which you would stake a claim on. You have to be selective in this and thereafter do a little bit of detective work.
An unclaimed piece of property would always have some sure signs about them. You need to be able to identify such plots with their overgrown gates and gardens, broken and bordered up windows, shrub lands, derelicts, unused garages or even the abandoned commercial premises and industrial buildings.
Since such signs are never much obvious, you will surely miss them if you drive about instead of walking around your own neighborhood.
You need to do the Registration Check once your property identification is done. That is, you need to contact the local land registry in order to check whether the said piece of land is already registered or unregistered. It may also be that the status is pending first application.
If the plot is already registered there might be many reasons behind it. The owner could have died without leaving any relatives behind. Or it may be that the relative do not want the land or may be the owner has moved abroad abandoning this property.
Now, in case it is unregistered, it means it is the still not registered by anybody and hence no owner. This is your best claim bet though it might mean that the owner tracing part will become tough for you.
Thirdly, if the status is of 'Pending first Application', it means that someone else has already made a claim on it. So, you would be better off if you leave this plot and search for another such one instead.
In adverse possession, owner tracing is the third step to undertake since in order to claim any land you need to first provide proof that you have tried to contact the original owner.
Some of the effective ways to do research on the owner is ask the immediate neighbors about whether they have any news regarding his whereabouts. Apart from this other avenues such as checking with the electoral role, local post office, newsagents, landlords, milkman, even the probate registry office (in case he is no more) can be done.
When you are ready to stake claim on the property, a good idea would be to create an evidence of your claim start date. Though this is not mandatory, but get hold of two friends or neighbors to sign as witnesses to your document.
Put up a 'No Trespassing Allowed' signs or even a mini fence in order to quickly bring to the scene an owner if at all he exists.
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.
A few people who might be helpful are the local neighbors of the plot of land. This is because hardly anybody wants to live beside an overgrown derelict building along with a garbage filled stream where unwanted events might be taking place at night time.
If you want detailed information about the various adverse possession laws and legislations that prevail, you can take the help of the countless CDs and booklets that are available in the Market. There exists also many websites which undertake the owner tracing detective work on your behalf.
All this can be put to good use and you can truly find and claim a free plot of land for yourself.
Source by Chase Garry Richards
