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March 5, 2007
You think you own this? You don’t own nothin’
Today we were again warned as the instructor began, that this lesson would be boring. True to his word, he delivered a lesson regarding real estate interests and restrictions. This began with an explanation of PETE.
PETE stands for the the four powers which can interfere with real estate ownership. They are defined as follows:
Police power - Despite the name, this power actually applies to the powers which the local governent receives from the state to protect and enforce the public health, safery and welfare. Under these powers, the city is allows to test your pool water’s PH, or respond to a complaint of Mold to force you to replace your carpet. I had a neighbour growing up who’s yard caused him to experience the police power of the city firsthand. In response to complaints, they were forced to spend a healthy sum cleaning up the jungle that was their backyard. The yard quickly reverted back to it’s grown over state as the years went by. Makes me wonder if it worked out to be cheaper to just let the grass grow and wait until the city intervened instead of going to the hassle of maintaining it. Police power provides the city with the right to enforce zoning, and hopefully to protect city residents from becoming recipients of the federal superfund by doing something stupid like allowing development over a landfill.
Eminent domain - Thanks to the news, most people know that legally, a city can exercise it’s right to eminent domain and condemn a home within city limits assuming it has a valid need to do so, and pays fair market value. Cities rarely condemn, as they don’t want to look evil, recently here in Utah a man painted on his house “The City is Stealing my home”. Papers love to cover such stories and so, at least locally, the city generally pays 1.5 times fair market value in order to avoid trouble.
Taxation: This has been covered in other lessons.
Escheat: If a home is left with no heirs, it goes to the state.
The lesson then delved into estates, and the respective interests offered by each. I’ll go over this in part 2.
read comments (2)
March 5th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
Eminent domain seems to be an issue pretty much everywhere. In my honest opinion it just does not seem too very fair to up and take someones land.
Is kind of nice to get more than fair market value though. Usually its the other way around and you get ripped off with some low ball “fair” offer.
March 5th, 2007 at 11:48 pm
Something that gets hammered into us at RE School is that property ownership is not an all encompassing right. It’s a bundle of rights to use land subject to often strict rules and regulations.