As much as "ask in the local pub" sounds like a cop-out, it genuinely is the best way to find out. There is always someone who knows everyone nearby and the farmers will know every field off by heart.
I imagine that the less populated the area, the more true this is (in highly populated areas there might be too many people for one person to keep track of)
@@DoctorX17 You'd be amazed at how well some people know their densely populated city neighborhoods; not only in the present, but sometimes 3 or 4 generations back. Find the right pub (or local equivalent); you'll find that person.
@@dsnodgrass4843 heh, guess people are more social there. Here it can be hard to find someone who knows more than everyone on a single block, let alone larger chunks of the city (there are millions of people in the city, so nobody could know everybody here if they wanted to)
Probably similar to how they expected to know where that stone in the woods was in my other comment about my friends land in rural Kentucky. After all, it also mentioned someone else's property line by name. Maybe they figured the next person could just knock on the guy's door and ask.
My grandparent's house is the only house on our street that is not registered. I know because I worked at a law firm, and all law firms have near unlimited access to online land registry records. Generally old people just don't care xD They say "well, that's someone else's problem when I die" lol.
Are you supposed to be checking things like that without a reason? I mean, HMRC staff have nearly unlimited information to everyone's tax affairs but very against the rules to just look up your neighbour, lol
@@Cragglerock93 I think they just mean that normal people have to pay a small per fee per recod they access, but that they buy access in bulk and they buy way more access than they need, so they don't really care about looking up more records than is absolutely neccasary because they never reach their "data cap".
Hmmm, if land needs to be registered to be inherited, then I can only imagine that the government will cease the land when he dies and it will not be inherited by your grandparent's children. But you're the law guy, you tell me..
I'd imagine you're not far from the truth though... if theirs any kind of loophole which means they can avoid registering the land then you know they're going to use it as a way to avoid having to pay tax on that land.
You forgot the most embarrassing bit. Neighbouring Scotland has had a land register since 1617, over two hundred years before England and Wales sorted it out.
They also had a bit of what you might call "an issue" with the kicking out of -land owning- tenant farmers so that sheep could graze there. But don't worry too much about that, most of the disposessed died of starvation so there was no real comeback. 😏
@@loc4725 the evictions were mostly done by English people you know, not saying no Scottish landlords did it but a whole lot of English landlords evicted Irish and Scottish people
The records of land ownership used to be kept in regional archives until about 10 years ago, when HM Land Registry decided to put it all in one building. I work in the building. It's absolutely vast.
So... If a squatter shows up on unregistered land then the only thing keeping them from taking ownership is a possible current owner. However if there is a current owner they'll have to prove that they own the land, which is harder when they've been trying to avoid the registry.
Yeah, it's called "squatter's rights", and it kind of varies from different places that allow it, I think, but generally the trick is that you have to improve and maintain the property for a certain period of time; you can't just come and pitch a tent and strew garbage around and call it yours.
Not necessarily, Sam's over simplifying the situation to make it funny, it's not that this unregistered land lacks good title (legal, provable ownership), it's just that the current individual in possession of title isn't known to this specific registry. I'm not a solicitor, I'm not even British, but I am *currently* a law student in the US studying property law - our rules have diverged over the years in some key ways, but the broadest possible strokes of estate ownership don't really change. Adverse Possession (squatters rights) has a lot of complicated rules around it to protect both parties, but in general AP exists to foster the use of land, so you can only AP property that is not being used. If it is, then the person attempting to enter upon and take the land has no claim - either the person originally occupying the property (we'll call them A) is the true owner, in which case the adverse possessor (we'll call them B) has no claim; or A cannot prove title (they either have an incomplete deed, no deed, or some other problem with their deed) but has been in possession longer than B, which would mean A was in adverse possession longer than B, therefore giving A a stronger title. Essentially if someone is currently occupying it, you can't adverse possess the land out from under them (generally). IF the land is not being occupied, B *may* be able to enter upon the land through adverse possession, but it's not as simple as walking into a field and saying "this is mine." The rules of adverse possession are complicated, often contradictory, and not consistent across common law jurisdictions. But in general, if B entered upon the property, was actively using the land, doing so in an open manner, was in continuous occupancy (in terms of years, B can leave the property to go grocery shopping haha), and was the only person to do so THEN they can claim adverse possession after the statute of limitations runs out (usually 10-25 years). There is another requirement for adverse possession, "hostility," but it's complicated even for lawyers, so I'm not going to get into it here. If A shows up at any point within the statute of limits, and can prove good title (provide a deed, show chain of title from the original true owner to their current ownership, court documentation proving their title, anything), then B is out on their ass. Basically the Registry Sam is talking about isn't the sole authority on ownership, it's just a catalogue of current owners. You can, and should, have other proof of ownership (namely a deed).
So, claiming unregistered land by adverse possession in the UK (ie by being a squatter) takes 12 years. You have to provide proof that you've occupied the land without the consent of the owner for 12 years. If you do this, then you can apply to the land registry. They will then contact anybody they think might have an interest in the land and maybe put a notice in the local paper etc. If nobody comes forward to dispute their claim then the land belongs to the squatter. If the land is owned by the government, then the time period is increased to 30 years and if it's a beach or foreshore etc (which is owned by the Queen) then it's 60 years. "...if there is a current owner they'll have to prove that they own the land, which is harder when they've been trying to avoid the registry." Just because a property isn't registered doesn't mean that somebody has been trying to avoid it. All it means is that it has not been sold since 1990. If you (or your family eg grandfather etc) have bought a house or land or other property before 1990 and not sold it then it will not necessarily be registered. This is not at all uncommon. Even though a property is not registered that does not mean that there is no simple way to prove ownership. Proof of ownership will be evidenced by a bundle of title documents or deeds. Historically such deeds would have been required to be produced whenever there was a “dealing” with the property, for example, a change of ownership. The seller (via their conveyancer) of a property of unregistered land must provide evidence of title to the buyer by showing physical, documentary evidence of ownership from a point in time 15 years beforehand, right up to the present day. In conveyancing terms, this is also known as “deducing title”. In reality, these physical deeds will often go back decades or even hundreds or years. If the land is registered then it's much harder to gain adverse possession
@@NickLea very good summary but one small niggle - it means it hasn't been sold since 1990 OR hasn't had a grant of rights, been leased for more than seven years, or passed under a will since 2003 (I'm probably missing something there). The Land Registration Act 2002 expanded the number of transactions resulting in compulsory registration.
It's not quite accurate that there was no record of land holding in England. Land transactions were often recorded in a fictitious legal suit between the buyer and seller called a fine. A record of this agreement was kept by the court of common pleas as the 'foot of the fine' (the lower part of the agreement was cut away and kept by the court). These 'feet of fines' could then be consulted in the event of a dispute.
Yep, this makes it even more amusing tbh, that clearly the best way to record land transactions were to create an imaginary legal case and then drop it.
@@Kelly_C that's what happens when your country is so old that at one point everything was a solution to a problem not yet encountered. New countries have it much easier, they can just follow a blueprint for how to do things and tweak it here and there to suit them.
@@lsedge7280 When the circuit court was the only commonly available legal authority that may have been the only viable way to have them record the land transfer. It is a good example of using a system for a purpose it was never intended out of necessity.
As much as there’s many “fun facts” channels out there, I subscribed to this channel simply because I like the narration style. It’s casual and is at a decent pace, and it’s easy to understand.
@@mancclubber I suppose it is necessary for me to fact check anything I see on youtube as well- but at least this video exposed me to the idea that perhaps there is 15% of “unrecognised” land in the UK. Also, I’m just a schoolgirl hahaha so I’m probably clever enough not to believe everything I see….. at least I hope so
Just a minor correction that early on (even in the 19th century) some areas, particularly around London, had compulsory land registration, but it wasn’t compulsory across the whole of England and Wales until the 1990s as you said.
The land ownership problem where I live, Vermont, is spring rights. Farmers have always needed water, and didn’t always have a good source on their own land. They would negotiate with a neighbor for the right to use a spring on the other guy’s land. The problem arises because they would describe the spring in the deed as “The spring near the big maple tree in the pasture.” Of course the pasture is now forest and the big maple is gone but a neighbor has a dried out well and wants to use a spring. Lawsuits ensue. My dad, a judge, called spring rights “the bane of the Vermont legal system.” See also: poorly defined rights of way with use stipulations that only made sense in the 19th century.
Is it just me, or has this channel’s humor *really* improved in this video? Sometimes I get frustrated with HAI because the humor doesn’t seem to mesh well with the rest of the video, but this one just works a lot better than usual.
I feel like for this video, instead of the jokes being in little breaks from the information, they’re packaged in with the information, which keeps the pacing of the video easy to follow
Wales has historically been administered under England since the 13th century until more recent times. The video was referencing the time of the Black Death when Wales was administratively a part of England.
Headcanon Accepted. -> Also super_valuable statistical information : Wizards OWN ~15% of the designated subdivided private parcels (not necesarily "15% of all surface").
Technically speaking, all land in the United Kingdom (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland & Wales) belongs to the crown (Queen Elizabeth II). The Land register records on her behalf those people or entities that have aquired rights to occupy said land. Ownership is generally permission to occupy the surface, but it does not generally allow for mining, ownership of any buried minerals, neither does it allow for space above the land. The deeds to a property and the land that property stands on are effectively a long lease from the crown. So any unregistered land is of course owned by the crown, but the right to occupy might not be so clearly cut. Fun fact; Technically the Crown also own all of Canada, Australia and many other land masses of the commonwealth.
Strictly speaking, compulsory first registration was introduced on a piecemeal basis from 1926, and different parts of the country adopted it at different times. It wasn't until 1990 that everywhere in England and Wales had it.
Fun fact! The town name in the beginning of the video is actually not the Welsh towns full name! It’s actually, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.
When I was a trainee doing conveyancing we once had a client buying an unregistered house. Was a real pain in the proverbial as none of the maps in any of the documents had anything to do with each other, and it was really difficult to work out who owned what over the years as people had died and not passed their land on properly.
Got a spot for your next mistake video, at 2:28 you show an old drawing of the black death over England. Unfortunately this image also extends over the English border and into Scotland. A separate country with entirely different (and more interesting) land ownership laws.
@@chewu that's a good point actually, that's some serious attention to detail on their part that I missed out on. I should know better being a Scot with a focused interested on my country's history.
A new Domesday Book, the "Modern Domesday" Book, was compiled and published in 1873, which updated estate rolls for England and Wales. The purpose of the books isn't to establish a perfect up to date list of current ownership, but to source who the original owner of a property is - that way you can determine what the legal title the current owner actually has (you cannot give away a title greater than the one you have, so it's important to know what the starting point is). The ideal is that you search back through every transaction on the estate/parcel (or for the specific owners if the jurisdiction you're in records titles solely based on buyer&seller) until you get all the way back to the "True Owner." In the United States that is the state, in England that is generally the crown.
I work in local government and I come across unregistered land quite often. Like the video says, there's a lot of properties that haven't changed hands for YEARS, so nobody's registered them. It's a real pain when investigating someone who owes us a lot of money.
Is it disingenuous to say "nobody knows", which would be more accurately stated as the HM Land Registry does not hold a record. Ownership can be easily established for most of the 15% of the land and asking in the pub in villages is better than the internet, which the search fee equating to a few pints of beer and a hangover. Unregistered properties are still regularly sold with very few issues. There are tracts of land though where there is no known ownership - usually overgrown plots between gardens - and there is a process for dealing with these. If an owner manages the land for 12 years (cuts the grass and mends the fences) with no-one making a claim on it, they can apply for "possessory title" which is ratified as "absolute title" after a further 3 years.
I'd say by far the quickest way to find out would be to set up some illegal encampment of some description, or do some minor damage to the land, block access etc. The owner will come out of the woodwork very quickly!
Its not just old fields that are unregistered. I lived for 25 years on a road that was unregistered - and this in London, only a handful of years ago! The road gave access to about 100 homes, each one built on registered land. But the actual roadway was (still is) unregistered. This leads to some anomalies, such as not being able to prove you have right of access to your own home (don't worry, there are ways around that). Then a couple of decades ago a new strip of land appeared on Land Registry plans - a narrow strip about 2 metres wide between the road and our property - separate to the road but also unregistered. It is thought that the non-registration of the road dates back to a registration error when the road was carved out of a farm, and I'm guessing the new strip was created as an unintended consequence of digitising all the Land Registry maps and plans.
Neither England nor Wales are countries in any meaningful sense. They're regions of the United Kingdom. England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and more comparable to US states. England isn't any more of a country than California is.
As a person from Singapore (which used to be a British colony) this sounds like a perfect opportunity to play the reverse uno card by squatting some land in the UK 🌚
Oh the Welsh are going to be upset that you're using a bit of land in Wales to talk about how we don't know who owns land in England... (hint: England and Wales are different places)
Administratively they may as-well have been the same nation up until the advent of the Welsh Assembly. Thats why a lot of the institutions/certifications are England and Wales - because up until then they were treated as one nation.
@@trickygoose2 Wales has a different tax and law system, as well as different health services. The country has had its own government for many years now.
@@JackStevensFromWales While Wales has some laws that are different to England it does not have a separate legal/courts system, unlike Scotland and Northern Ireland. The Welsh Assembly does not have as many powers as the Scottish Parliament.
@@trickygoose2 covid brought in Welsh only laws that are punishable under Welsh law and have given Welsh police specific laws. By your logic and going by that, Wales should be called Wales, not lumped into England. Right?
I wonder how exact some of these descriptions were when they were registered. I know someone who inherited land from their mom in very rural Kentucky just a few years ago. Part of the property description was "a stone at the edge of the woods, to the (some name) property line" and so on. Obviously the woods expanded since that was written decades earlier, compounding the problem.
Happened with my grandparents house. They bought it new in the early 1960’s and it was only first registered in 2014 once the house was sold after they’d both died. I believe that one of the crowns estates was the first to be registered with HMLR.
Then you’d be fine until the owner registers his land. In fact if it’s registered and the owner doesn’t kick you off the land within 10 years you can just claim the property, it’s 12 years if it’s not registered.
An episode of the 1990s TV show Pie in the Sky had a plot involving squatting. A company thought they had it made - squat on some nice land for your new factory for 12 years, the owner never shows up (because he's in jail), it's yours. Until he got early parole...
This is SUCH a Tom Scott topic, but in HAI's signature style. Now that I think about it, those two channels are stylistically almost the opposites, but with a lot of topic overlap!
It seems like this could be easily solved by the government just going "Hey, if you own unregistered land, you better register it or we'll just assume you don't exist & take it from you! You've got 5 years" or something
Some of the land is probably also owned by people who died a while ago but who don't have any descendants/family. So now the land is either owned by a dead person or nobody at all.
If the person has not made a will and doesn't have any descendants entitled to inherit, the estate passes to the crown (effectively the people of the UK), who would usually sell it.
I was going to say that nobody seems to have noticed that the flag is upside down. A flag upside down is a sign of distress. The last person I pointed this out to was a Scotsman and he said the Union of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is in distress and left it flying upside down all week. 😀
as a Brazilian who owns land, I can assure you that, even when you have paperwork dating back to at least the 1950s, dominial chains are still needed to assure that your grandpa didn't steal that plot from someone else's grandpa
Another issue is how badly defined the boundaries between land holdings can be. One of boundaries is defined by a hand drawn line in three fields. I am using adverse possession to increase it and move the boundary to a geographic feature.
Is... it a thing to squat for a living? Like... would'nt you be able to just go to some of these unregistered areas, squat here and there and then sell the land you were able to claim? Might make an interesting TV show.
Well if you're a local goverment, I think attempting to essentially squat on the land would either reveal the owner or get the project through. Just do some investigation; get notices printed in local and national newspapers, social media, and goverment websites; and then if the owner still hasn't shown up deed in hand, turn that abandoned lot into a park
Or on a national level, put out a press release that any land not registered within the next six months will be automatically registered as crown land, regardless of what any older document says.
@@Roxor128 Doesn't crown land put it in the hands of the monarchy? I'd rather it go to local governments, even more than the national goverment. But a national law that says you have six months to register or it belongs to the municipal region it's located in should work
Land can be held in corporation, so just sell the corporation and you don't have to register either the land (if currently unregistered) or the sale of said land.
1:55 I hate to be that guy, but William the Conqueror was only called that AFTER he conquered England. Prior to that he was known as William the Bastard.
All land is owned by the crown. (except the city of London) The title is what changes hands. The registration is for the entitlement to use the land. Title = entitlement deed is a document stating facts. If you apply this legal status to the notion of land ownership it makes sense of your interpretation of who owns land and why you can claim it. You are only registering your right to use crown land not ownership per say
Yes and no. They are different countries/nations but they have been largely administered as one country since the 13th century - so a lot of what applies to Wales applies in England and vice versa.
I have a feeling that a large amount of this land probably is inhospitable areas of what used to be large estates. When the estates were split, no one bought the crap areas and so eventually they just got left to time
Media disinformation campaign to discredit a legitimate anti-parasitic/anti-viral medicine that was developed for use in humans, approved by the FDA for humans in 1981, and whose inventors earned a Nobel prize. Hahaha so funny.
@@jsquared1013 It isn't disinformation to point out that the medicine hasn't been approved for Covid and then to mock people who take the frickin horse version rather than get a damn vaccine.
@@jsquared1013 yeah, coz parasites are viruses are totally the same thing, that's like using an antibiotic to stop a headache, even though antibiotics are proven to work to fight bacterial infections they do nothing to treat a headache 🤦
Brits surveyed all land of my country and assigned them revenue survey nos. Every village have revenue survey number and cities have city survey number.
Actually the legal systems in the UK are divided (generally) between: (1) England and Wales; (2) Scotland; and (3) Northern Ireland so it probably was deliberate. Scotland has it's own land registry.
William the Conqueror was not French. He was Norse - Norman being a shortening of Norseman. Normandy was not part of France in 1066. It wasn’t integrated into the Kingdom of France until 1204.
I feel like that's rural Eastern Europe too. I know so many patches of land that are supposed to be my grandpa's, everybody knows it's his but the government.
1:15 well you see, when your country is more that 1000 years old and paper records fade over time, and most of that 1000 years was spent invading each other and/or being invaded by francel land ownership gets complicated
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Sooo, if the land is inherited from your father, does that mean you have to register it? And if a company owns it can they wait indefinitely unless they want to sell?
IANAL, but you don't have to register for inheritance. Lands needs to be registered with the Title Registry if its bought, leased out for over 7 years or mortgaged.
For the record: England is 130'278.43km² and Wales is 20'779km², so 15% of their union is about 22'658.6km². Queen Elizabeth II _personally_ owns 1.16km² of land. Every plot of land should be valued depending on area and other factors, but as an average one km² of British land is sold for around 1.5million pounds. If you acquire all the land this video is about, you could sell it for 33.6 billion pounds (40bln eur, 44bln usd).
As much as "ask in the local pub" sounds like a cop-out, it genuinely is the best way to find out. There is always someone who knows everyone nearby and the farmers will know every field off by heart.
I imagine that the less populated the area, the more true this is (in highly populated areas there might be too many people for one person to keep track of)
@@DoctorX17 You'd be amazed at how well some people know their densely populated city neighborhoods; not only in the present, but sometimes 3 or 4 generations back. Find the right pub (or local equivalent); you'll find that person.
@@dsnodgrass4843 heh, guess people are more social there. Here it can be hard to find someone who knows more than everyone on a single block, let alone larger chunks of the city (there are millions of people in the city, so nobody could know everybody here if they wanted to)
I believe it's how the Ordnance Survey found out what names to give certain landmarks in a particular area when making their maps.
Probably similar to how they expected to know where that stone in the woods was in my other comment about my friends land in rural Kentucky. After all, it also mentioned someone else's property line by name. Maybe they figured the next person could just knock on the guy's door and ask.
Now I want to go England with a Conquistador outfit and claim that we where just playing the long game and now own 15% of England.
yes
If you're going for a Spanish outfit, why not go a little more... unexpected?
@@bitequation314 especially if you’re asking some questions, you should dress up as the Spanish question askers. No one would see it coming.
@@bitequation314 yes that would be good but you may face some _iquisition_ from the locals.
Oh heck I was gonna claim that area of land to enact the next phase of Revolutionary War 2: Freedom Boogaloo
My grandparent's house is the only house on our street that is not registered. I know because I worked at a law firm, and all law firms have near unlimited access to online land registry records. Generally old people just don't care xD They say "well, that's someone else's problem when I die" lol.
Lol
Are you supposed to be checking things like that without a reason? I mean, HMRC staff have nearly unlimited information to everyone's tax affairs but very against the rules to just look up your neighbour, lol
@@Cragglerock93 I think they just mean that normal people have to pay a small per fee per recod they access, but that they buy access in bulk and they buy way more access than they need, so they don't really care about looking up more records than is absolutely neccasary because they never reach their "data cap".
Hmmm, if land needs to be registered to be inherited, then I can only imagine that the government will cease the land when he dies and it will not be inherited by your grandparent's children. But you're the law guy, you tell me..
@@HesderOleh Yes, those are public records. In my country I can even see the owners loan application.
Maybe it's all owned by someone named "Unregistered"so that they don't have to pay taxes?
Damn, they've been doing this for centuries, must be a dynasty
@@crackedemerald4930 Unregistered Dynasty. That sounds very confusing
I'd imagine you're not far from the truth though... if theirs any kind of loophole which means they can avoid registering the land then you know they're going to use it as a way to avoid having to pay tax on that land.
Potential, but I have a feeling that a majority of it is in some pretty inhospitable areas
@@EdgyShooter like Wales
You forgot the most embarrassing bit. Neighbouring Scotland has had a land register since 1617, over two hundred years before England and Wales sorted it out.
They also had a bit of what you might call "an issue" with the kicking out of -land owning- tenant farmers so that sheep could graze there. But don't worry too much about that, most of the disposessed died of starvation so there was no real comeback. 😏
@@loc4725 the evictions were mostly done by English people you know, not saying no Scottish landlords did it but a whole lot of English landlords evicted Irish and Scottish people
@@matthewmccarthy3787 Blame on the aristocracy not the English, and their descendants still profit from it
The entire world figured it out, ottomans have land registries that go all the way to 1500s...
@@matthewmccarthy3787 technically this isn't true, it was mostly done by Scottish Lords that lived in London.
The records of land ownership used to be kept in regional archives until about 10 years ago, when HM Land Registry decided to put it all in one building. I work in the building. It's absolutely vast.
Has it been copied to a digital database yet?
@@amdonut8091 😆😂🤣🤣🤣🤣 oh you sweet innocent child.
@@dominictemple I guess it's a big no 😂
what if.... you know the building caught fire or something?
@@amdonut8091 there are more than a million boxes full of documents. That's not really possible
The logo for Her Majesty's Land Registry looks like a Settlers of Catan map.
Oh my god it does
Because the Catan map was made that way
Hexagons are the bestagons.
It's more like the Settlers of Catan is a simulation of how the British treat land, right?
I work at HMLR and yes it does.
So... If a squatter shows up on unregistered land then the only thing keeping them from taking ownership is a possible current owner. However if there is a current owner they'll have to prove that they own the land, which is harder when they've been trying to avoid the registry.
Owner: “Go away, I have the twig for this plot!”
Yeah, it's called "squatter's rights", and it kind of varies from different places that allow it, I think, but generally the trick is that you have to improve and maintain the property for a certain period of time; you can't just come and pitch a tent and strew garbage around and call it yours.
Not necessarily, Sam's over simplifying the situation to make it funny, it's not that this unregistered land lacks good title (legal, provable ownership), it's just that the current individual in possession of title isn't known to this specific registry. I'm not a solicitor, I'm not even British, but I am *currently* a law student in the US studying property law - our rules have diverged over the years in some key ways, but the broadest possible strokes of estate ownership don't really change. Adverse Possession (squatters rights) has a lot of complicated rules around it to protect both parties, but in general AP exists to foster the use of land, so you can only AP property that is not being used. If it is, then the person attempting to enter upon and take the land has no claim - either the person originally occupying the property (we'll call them A) is the true owner, in which case the adverse possessor (we'll call them B) has no claim; or A cannot prove title (they either have an incomplete deed, no deed, or some other problem with their deed) but has been in possession longer than B, which would mean A was in adverse possession longer than B, therefore giving A a stronger title. Essentially if someone is currently occupying it, you can't adverse possess the land out from under them (generally).
IF the land is not being occupied, B *may* be able to enter upon the land through adverse possession, but it's not as simple as walking into a field and saying "this is mine." The rules of adverse possession are complicated, often contradictory, and not consistent across common law jurisdictions. But in general, if B entered upon the property, was actively using the land, doing so in an open manner, was in continuous occupancy (in terms of years, B can leave the property to go grocery shopping haha), and was the only person to do so THEN they can claim adverse possession after the statute of limitations runs out (usually 10-25 years). There is another requirement for adverse possession, "hostility," but it's complicated even for lawyers, so I'm not going to get into it here.
If A shows up at any point within the statute of limits, and can prove good title (provide a deed, show chain of title from the original true owner to their current ownership, court documentation proving their title, anything), then B is out on their ass. Basically the Registry Sam is talking about isn't the sole authority on ownership, it's just a catalogue of current owners. You can, and should, have other proof of ownership (namely a deed).
So, claiming unregistered land by adverse possession in the UK (ie by being a squatter) takes 12 years. You have to provide proof that you've occupied the land without the consent of the owner for 12 years. If you do this, then you can apply to the land registry. They will then contact anybody they think might have an interest in the land and maybe put a notice in the local paper etc. If nobody comes forward to dispute their claim then the land belongs to the squatter.
If the land is owned by the government, then the time period is increased to 30 years and if it's a beach or foreshore etc (which is owned by the Queen) then it's 60 years.
"...if there is a current owner they'll have to prove that they own the land, which is harder when they've been trying to avoid the registry."
Just because a property isn't registered doesn't mean that somebody has been trying to avoid it. All it means is that it has not been sold since 1990. If you (or your family eg grandfather etc) have bought a house or land or other property before 1990 and not sold it then it will not necessarily be registered. This is not at all uncommon.
Even though a property is not registered that does not mean that there is no simple way to prove ownership. Proof of ownership will be evidenced by a bundle of title documents or deeds. Historically such deeds would have been required to be produced whenever there was a “dealing” with the property, for example, a change of ownership.
The seller (via their conveyancer) of a property of unregistered land must provide evidence of title to the buyer by showing physical, documentary evidence of ownership from a point in time 15 years beforehand, right up to the present day. In conveyancing terms, this is also known as “deducing title”. In reality, these physical deeds will often go back decades or even hundreds or years.
If the land is registered then it's much harder to gain adverse possession
@@NickLea very good summary but one small niggle - it means it hasn't been sold since 1990 OR hasn't had a grant of rights, been leased for more than seven years, or passed under a will since 2003 (I'm probably missing something there). The Land Registration Act 2002 expanded the number of transactions resulting in compulsory registration.
It's not quite accurate that there was no record of land holding in England. Land transactions were often recorded in a fictitious legal suit between the buyer and seller called a fine. A record of this agreement was kept by the court of common pleas as the 'foot of the fine' (the lower part of the agreement was cut away and kept by the court). These 'feet of fines' could then be consulted in the event of a dispute.
lmao I love how cobbled together everything about british government is
Yep, this makes it even more amusing tbh, that clearly the best way to record land transactions were to create an imaginary legal case and then drop it.
@@Kelly_C that's what happens when your country is so old that at one point everything was a solution to a problem not yet encountered. New countries have it much easier, they can just follow a blueprint for how to do things and tweak it here and there to suit them.
@@lsedge7280 When the circuit court was the only commonly available legal authority that may have been the only viable way to have them record the land transfer. It is a good example of using a system for a purpose it was never intended out of necessity.
As much as there’s many “fun facts” channels out there, I subscribed to this channel simply because I like the narration style. It’s casual and is at a decent pace, and it’s easy to understand.
Wow, that OwO guy I see everywhere got hacked. Now I've seen everything.
@@Atollic Nah, just a copycat spambot. Channel's 4 months old and has below 50 subs.
Despite it having glaring mistakes?
@@mancclubber I suppose it is necessary for me to fact check anything I see on youtube as well- but at least this video exposed me to the idea that perhaps there is 15% of “unrecognised” land in the UK. Also, I’m just a schoolgirl hahaha so I’m probably clever enough not to believe everything I see….. at least I hope so
"Felt bad that they weren't living up to their name"
Timestamp 1:54.
Reminds me of history of the entire world, i guess
"Shut up, nerd, that's too much work!" - Some guy in the 16th century to King Henry of Britain, I guess
I appreciate that you acknowledge that it's "England and Wales" in the video, but couldn't be bothered to acknowledge Wales existence in the title.
Whales?
@@dubious6718 Orcas?
@@aminelswefy1808 I think you did that on porpoise
Let's just hope the Welsh Nationalist don't see it, they are grumpy enough as it is at the moment.
It would make the title worse cause Wales has the population of a city
Just a minor correction that early on (even in the 19th century) some areas, particularly around London, had compulsory land registration, but it wasn’t compulsory across the whole of England and Wales until the 1990s as you said.
The land ownership problem where I live, Vermont, is spring rights. Farmers have always needed water, and didn’t always have a good source on their own land. They would negotiate with a neighbor for the right to use a spring on the other guy’s land.
The problem arises because they would describe the spring in the deed as “The spring near the big maple tree in the pasture.” Of course the pasture is now forest and the big maple is gone but a neighbor has a dried out well and wants to use a spring. Lawsuits ensue. My dad, a judge, called spring rights “the bane of the Vermont legal system.”
See also: poorly defined rights of way with use stipulations that only made sense in the 19th century.
Is it just me, or has this channel’s humor *really* improved in this video? Sometimes I get frustrated with HAI because the humor doesn’t seem to mesh well with the rest of the video, but this one just works a lot better than usual.
I’ve always liked the humor, but it was okay extra smooth this video.
I feel like for this video, instead of the jokes being in little breaks from the information, they’re packaged in with the information, which keeps the pacing of the video easy to follow
I just love the subtly where I didn't start laughing for a sec and had to pause "since horse dewormer hadn't been invented yet..."
When you said England you highlighted both England and Wales. That'll go down well ;)
The map at 2:26 also showed the Isle of Mann witch isn't even in the UK
Wales is usually forgotten about, which the culture and language is very interesting
Wales has historically been administered under England since the 13th century until more recent times. The video was referencing the time of the Black Death when Wales was administratively a part of England.
And part of Scotland!
It's the brick factories, so they don't have to pay taxes.
shhhhhhhh we don't speak of bricks here
@@briannem.6787 Why not? I doubt it' airlines.
@@quuaaarrrk8056 clearly you havent been a fan of HAI for very long coz you never mention the B word here lol but seriously dont
@@resolecca I have been, I just like the government thinking I’m not suspicious.
Congrats on not totally messing up England vs Cymru
No mistakes made here, none at all. No sir-y.
He must have meant Great Britain. He just doesn't understand 'cause he's a Scot.
@@Eggbutts I think he meant the UK.
Just say wales and stop being pretentious
@@danm2556 True, Welsh is pretty much a dead language anyway.
@@danm2556 Tbf Wales means "foreigners" and Cymru means "friends"
Ministry of Magic. Hogwarts has to be somewhere, you see.
Headcanon Accepted.
-> Also super_valuable statistical information : Wizards OWN ~15% of the designated subdivided private parcels (not necesarily "15% of all surface").
But Hogwarts is in Scotland...?
That Hogwarts is real, explains why JK Rowling rooted its storytelling in slight racism
Checks out
Hogwarts is in Scotland
Technically speaking, all land in the United Kingdom (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland & Wales) belongs to the crown (Queen Elizabeth II). The Land register records on her behalf those people or entities that have aquired rights to occupy said land. Ownership is generally permission to occupy the surface, but it does not generally allow for mining, ownership of any buried minerals, neither does it allow for space above the land. The deeds to a property and the land that property stands on are effectively a long lease from the crown. So any unregistered land is of course owned by the crown, but the right to occupy might not be so clearly cut.
Fun fact; Technically the Crown also own all of Canada, Australia and many other land masses of the commonwealth.
Strictly speaking, compulsory first registration was introduced on a piecemeal basis from 1926, and different parts of the country adopted it at different times. It wasn't until 1990 that everywhere in England and Wales had it.
Fun fact!
The town name in the beginning of the video is actually not the Welsh towns full name!
It’s actually, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.
I have a pencil with that name on it when I went to the shop there lol
WHAT THE-
Except it really isn't
@@ohpurpled except for it is, Llanfairpwllgwyngyll is just the shortened version
@@batzzowo8942 the shortened version is Llanfairpwll
The BGM for this is an absolute banger
When I was a trainee doing conveyancing we once had a client buying an unregistered house. Was a real pain in the proverbial as none of the maps in any of the documents had anything to do with each other, and it was really difficult to work out who owned what over the years as people had died and not passed their land on properly.
Got a spot for your next mistake video, at 2:28 you show an old drawing of the black death over England. Unfortunately this image also extends over the English border and into Scotland. A separate country with entirely different (and more interesting) land ownership laws.
Actually that map is correct for the time, roughly. Look up the Treaty of Newcastle (1334).
@@chewu that's a good point actually, that's some serious attention to detail on their part that I missed out on.
I should know better being a Scot with a focused interested on my country's history.
@@ComputerBusterGamer That's if the meant to or not! And sure, you can't know everything.
A new Domesday Book, the "Modern Domesday" Book, was compiled and published in 1873, which updated estate rolls for England and Wales. The purpose of the books isn't to establish a perfect up to date list of current ownership, but to source who the original owner of a property is - that way you can determine what the legal title the current owner actually has (you cannot give away a title greater than the one you have, so it's important to know what the starting point is). The ideal is that you search back through every transaction on the estate/parcel (or for the specific owners if the jurisdiction you're in records titles solely based on buyer&seller) until you get all the way back to the "True Owner." In the United States that is the state, in England that is generally the crown.
👆👆👆👆👆👆.
I work in local government and I come across unregistered land quite often. Like the video says, there's a lot of properties that haven't changed hands for YEARS, so nobody's registered them. It's a real pain when investigating someone who owes us a lot of money.
Perfect. No views, 0 likes/dislikes and 0 comments.
What
Perfectly balanced, as all things should be
Perfectly balanced, as everything should be
There's more bots than real people
Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.
Is it disingenuous to say "nobody knows", which would be more accurately stated as the HM Land Registry does not hold a record. Ownership can be easily established for most of the 15% of the land and asking in the pub in villages is better than the internet, which the search fee equating to a few pints of beer and a hangover. Unregistered properties are still regularly sold with very few issues.
There are tracts of land though where there is no known ownership - usually overgrown plots between gardens - and there is a process for dealing with these. If an owner manages the land for 12 years (cuts the grass and mends the fences) with no-one making a claim on it, they can apply for "possessory title" which is ratified as "absolute title" after a further 3 years.
I'd say by far the quickest way to find out would be to set up some illegal encampment of some description, or do some minor damage to the land, block access etc. The owner will come out of the woodwork very quickly!
Its not just old fields that are unregistered. I lived for 25 years on a road that was unregistered - and this in London, only a handful of years ago! The road gave access to about 100 homes, each one built on registered land. But the actual roadway was (still is) unregistered. This leads to some anomalies, such as not being able to prove you have right of access to your own home (don't worry, there are ways around that). Then a couple of decades ago a new strip of land appeared on Land Registry plans - a narrow strip about 2 metres wide between the road and our property - separate to the road but also unregistered. It is thought that the non-registration of the road dates back to a registration error when the road was carved out of a farm, and I'm guessing the new strip was created as an unintended consequence of digitising all the Land Registry maps and plans.
I’m English and I never knew this. Time to claim 15% of England for myself
Hoping the next video is the surprising fact that England and Wales are two different countries 👀 🏴
Neither England nor Wales are countries in any meaningful sense. They're regions of the United Kingdom. England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and more comparable to US states.
England isn't any more of a country than California is.
As a person from Singapore (which used to be a British colony) this sounds like a perfect opportunity to play the reverse uno card by squatting some land in the UK 🌚
Oh the Welsh are going to be upset that you're using a bit of land in Wales to talk about how we don't know who owns land in England...
(hint: England and Wales are different places)
Administratively they may as-well have been the same nation up until the advent of the Welsh Assembly. Thats why a lot of the institutions/certifications are England and Wales - because up until then they were treated as one nation.
@@ruxiist Yes, England and Wales have the same legal system, while Scotland has its own legal system.
@@trickygoose2 Wales has a different tax and law system, as well as different health services. The country has had its own government for many years now.
@@JackStevensFromWales While Wales has some laws that are different to England it does not have a separate legal/courts system, unlike Scotland and Northern Ireland. The Welsh Assembly does not have as many powers as the Scottish Parliament.
@@trickygoose2 covid brought in Welsh only laws that are punishable under Welsh law and have given Welsh police specific laws. By your logic and going by that, Wales should be called Wales, not lumped into England. Right?
I wonder how exact some of these descriptions were when they were registered. I know someone who inherited land from their mom in very rural Kentucky just a few years ago. Part of the property description was "a stone at the edge of the woods, to the (some name) property line" and so on. Obviously the woods expanded since that was written decades earlier, compounding the problem.
Happened with my grandparents house. They bought it new in the early 1960’s and it was only first registered in 2014 once the house was sold after they’d both died. I believe that one of the crowns estates was the first to be registered with HMLR.
what if we squatted on unregistered british land 😳
Then you’d be fine until the owner registers his land.
In fact if it’s registered and the owner doesn’t kick you off the land within 10 years you can just claim the property, it’s 12 years if it’s not registered.
An episode of the 1990s TV show Pie in the Sky had a plot involving squatting. A company thought they had it made - squat on some nice land for your new factory for 12 years, the owner never shows up (because he's in jail), it's yours. Until he got early parole...
You squat on my land (or your dog) for any reason and we will have a real issue.
@@finscreenname why would I squat on my dog?
@@OptimusWombat Just to show them how it feels....or are you above that? 😜
This is SUCH a Tom Scott topic, but in HAI's signature style. Now that I think about it, those two channels are stylistically almost the opposites, but with a lot of topic overlap!
When he says England but uses the UK flag😭. Along with almost everything else when naming literal countries
Also the flag was the upside-down. Most distressing :D
Also he was actually talking about 15% of England AND Wales, so it should've been 2 flags.
It seems like this could be easily solved by the government just going "Hey, if you own unregistered land, you better register it or we'll just assume you don't exist & take it from you! You've got 5 years" or something
"Since nobody had invented horse de-wormer yet..."
I LITERALLY ALMOST CHOKED ON MY DRINK.
Well played.
Ivermectin is on the WHO's list of essential medicines
@@Ravidist for parasites not for covid 🤦
@JimTheFly ikr that joke was spectacular (chefs kiss)
@@Ravidist And the guy who discovered it won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
@@Ravidist These people are promoting horse-based ivermectin, not the human kind...
The crown 15%, aristocracy 15%, corporations 35%, house owners 5%, 12% offshore holdings which leaves 18% we don’t know who owns
You can't just take the land, you need to claim it publicly for a good while and if no one contests your claim. Its yours!!!
Little annoyed that Wales is called England, we’re a separate country. 2:29
Well this video is rather coincidental since I've spent the best part of today looking deep into 1880s property deeds for the railway in Liverpool
🧐
Some of the land is probably also owned by people who died a while ago but who don't have any descendants/family. So now the land is either owned by a dead person or nobody at all.
If the person has not made a will and doesn't have any descendants entitled to inherit, the estate passes to the crown (effectively the people of the UK), who would usually sell it.
@@trickygoose2 But only if the Crown know that the deceased owned it....
1:26 "England" *Shows flag of the UK*
Isn't it flown upside down?
I was going to say that nobody seems to have noticed that the flag is upside down. A flag upside down is a sign of distress. The last person I pointed this out to was a Scotsman and he said the Union of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is in distress and left it flying upside down all week. 😀
"And that would be true, if it wasn't in fact, also false!" I'm going to be using that much more often now
as a Brazilian who owns land, I can assure you that, even when you have paperwork dating back to at least the 1950s, dominial chains are still needed to assure that your grandpa didn't steal that plot from someone else's grandpa
👆👆👆👆👆👆.
Another issue is how badly defined the boundaries between land holdings can be. One of boundaries is defined by a hand drawn line in three fields. I am using adverse possession to increase it and move the boundary to a geographic feature.
Is... it a thing to squat for a living? Like... would'nt you be able to just go to some of these unregistered areas, squat here and there and then sell the land you were able to claim? Might make an interesting TV show.
Yes, you could.
Wouldn't it take like 30 years
@@crackedemerald4930 the whole process takes 12 years if the land is privately owned, 30 years if it’s owned by the royal family.
@@TT-hd3zi it would be the longest running television series in the universe
@@TT-hd3zi they can still show up and throw you ofd their land
Well if you're a local goverment, I think attempting to essentially squat on the land would either reveal the owner or get the project through. Just do some investigation; get notices printed in local and national newspapers, social media, and goverment websites; and then if the owner still hasn't shown up deed in hand, turn that abandoned lot into a park
Or on a national level, put out a press release that any land not registered within the next six months will be automatically registered as crown land, regardless of what any older document says.
@@Roxor128 Doesn't crown land put it in the hands of the monarchy? I'd rather it go to local governments, even more than the national goverment. But a national law that says you have six months to register or it belongs to the municipal region it's located in should work
*why nobody knows who owns 15% of England and Wales
That's what I were thinking
Dominic Chadwick the UK is Wales, England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, so it wouldn’t be correct
@@nixd0rf356 A, England is totally a country. B, it shouldn't be 'the UK' because then the 15% would be wrong.
Land can be held in corporation, so just sell the corporation and you don't have to register either the land (if currently unregistered) or the sale of said land.
Why does the thumbnail refer to England but has Wales in it?
The longer and more boring answer tho is cause it's a map of the UK (which includes both England and Wales) since that's what this video is about
@@xp7575 Except it is not as Northern Ireland and Scotland are blank on the Map. Only Wales and England have detail.
@@KnightThomash I never said it was all encompassing and included the entirety of the UK lol, I was literally just explaining why it included Wales
1:55 I hate to be that guy, but William the Conqueror was only called that AFTER he conquered England. Prior to that he was known as William the Bastard.
HAI: Posts video on England
The Queen: Nervous sweating*
This video has some serious "history of the entire world, i guess" vibes. Love it!
4:58 - So, like a stealing a house in the US, you can just stealing a land in the UK? Neat!
All land is owned by the crown. (except the city of London) The title is what changes hands. The registration is for the entitlement to use the land. Title = entitlement deed is a document stating facts. If you apply this legal status to the notion of land ownership it makes sense of your interpretation of who owns land and why you can claim it. You are only registering your right to use crown land not ownership per say
Maybe change the title to England and Wales not just England because Wales and England are two different countries
Yes and no. They are different countries/nations but they have been largely administered as one country since the 13th century - so a lot of what applies to Wales applies in England and vice versa.
wait so... what's required for someone to make claim of a patch of that unclaimed land? besides nobody else making a claim of the same patch?
Guns
And ammunition
Nobody knows who owns 15% of England… uses wales as an example…
I loved the silky smooth transition to saving time! 👌
👆👆👆👆👆👆..
I saved time by stopping the video at that point ;-)
OMG I literally spit out my water when "they hadnt invented horse de-wormer yet" came on! LOL
2:25 - Haha, Horse dewormer. The writer of that joke, he can have a complimentary BigGuillotine from MyGuillotine, on the house. Lol
Nice video=) Keep up the good work.
This is the opposite of a problem. Let people have their land in peace.
*click on video about england*
video starts talking about wales
oh no
I have a feeling that a large amount of this land probably is inhospitable areas of what used to be large estates. When the estates were split, no one bought the crap areas and so eventually they just got left to time
I hope someone in 200-300 years finds this video and wonders why HAI references horse-dewormer.
Media disinformation campaign to discredit a legitimate anti-parasitic/anti-viral medicine that was developed for use in humans, approved by the FDA for humans in 1981, and whose inventors earned a Nobel prize. Hahaha so funny.
@@jsquared1013 It isn't disinformation to point out that the medicine hasn't been approved for Covid and then to mock people who take the frickin horse version rather than get a damn vaccine.
@@jsquared1013 yeah, coz parasites are viruses are totally the same thing, that's like using an antibiotic to stop a headache, even though antibiotics are proven to work to fight bacterial infections they do nothing to treat a headache 🤦
Brits surveyed all land of my country and assigned them revenue survey nos. Every village have revenue survey number and cities have city survey number.
Your welcome :), we aim to please.
Hey I love how you use "England", "England & Wales" and "Britain" interchangeably. I love it when Mexicans treat different countries as synonymous
Actually the legal systems in the UK are divided (generally) between: (1) England and Wales; (2) Scotland; and (3) Northern Ireland so it probably was deliberate. Scotland has it's own land registry.
William the Conqueror was not French. He was Norse - Norman being a shortening of Norseman. Normandy was not part of France in 1066. It wasn’t integrated into the Kingdom of France until 1204.
2:30 Wales is part of England?
No, but the principality of Wales has the same legal system as England. Scotland and, to a lesser extent, Northern Ireland do not.
I feel like that's rural Eastern Europe too. I know so many patches of land that are supposed to be my grandpa's, everybody knows it's his but the government.
That Marie Antoinette reference of "Let them eat cake" at 1:09 is great
I say that 15% is owned by Macleod the Highlander.
I had the option to study English Land Law this semester... damn it I missed out 😭
You in UCD? You're better off if you didnt!
Also Ireland has unreg land too hahhaha
@@hucklebucklin Trinity here, 3rd year. Loved land law all the same.
It is now His Majesty's Land Registry. Yes, the name does change based on the gender of the monarch, like a few other government departments.
Video title really ought to be "Why Nobody Knows Who Owns 15% of the UK", since a good chuck of that 15% isn't actually in ENGLAND.
Yes but Americans don't understand the difference so it would make them upset.
Technically, the HM Land Registry only covers England and Wales. So the video titles should be "Why Nobody Knows Who Owns 15% of England & Wales".
But we do know who owns Scotland & NI, so the 15% figure would be even wrong-er
No, the 15% doesn't include Scotland and Northern Ireland, so if it was the UK the number would change.
This is one of the funniest HAI videos I've seen in a while
Ask in the local pub - ah yes, England
1:15 well you see, when your country is more that 1000 years old and paper records fade over time, and most of that 1000 years was spent invading each other and/or being invaded by francel land ownership gets complicated
Wales is not england.
There are library's of those sticks in England. It is quite something to behold!
The very first time I have ever clicked Ona. UA-cam notification 😂😂
I'm seriously digging the music in this video!
"Nobody had invented horse de-wormer yet" lmaoo
That tickled me too lol
ikr that joke was spectacular (chefs kiss)
Well... Time to get that flagpole and find some land for myself!! I do wonder if I can make a micronation in one of these portions of land.
"and that would be true, too, if it weren't false"
“Since de-wormer wasn’t invented yet”🤣🤣🤣🤣
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“England’s unregistered land”
Thumbnail:wales
Still more british than you, irishman
Nobody said anything about being British though 😐
_laughs in pandora papers_
😬 Nothing to see here, move along...
Sooo, if the land is inherited from your father, does that mean you have to register it? And if a company owns it can they wait indefinitely unless they want to sell?
IANAL, but you don't have to register for inheritance. Lands needs to be registered with the Title Registry if its bought, leased out for over 7 years or mortgaged.
Of course I know him, he’s me.
For the record: England is 130'278.43km² and Wales is 20'779km², so 15% of their union is about 22'658.6km².
Queen Elizabeth II _personally_ owns 1.16km² of land.
Every plot of land should be valued depending on area and other factors, but as an average one km² of British land is sold for around 1.5million pounds.
If you acquire all the land this video is about, you could sell it for 33.6 billion pounds (40bln eur, 44bln usd).