Text B. Land transfer

Text A. LAND LAW

КОНТРОЛЬНАЯ РАБОТА №2

Вариант 5

Выполните следующие задания:

Прочтите текст.

In most legal systems a distinction is made between land and other kinds of property. Sometimes land is called real estate in contrast to personal estate or immovable assets in contrast to movable assets such as furniture and vehicles. In this chapter "land" refers not only to a piece of ground, but to any buildings upon it.

All over the world people think of land as the most important form of property. A subsistence farmer in a developing country needs a secure right to use a piece of land in order to grow food for his family. A city dweller needs shelter from cold and heat and theft. Many people spend all their working lives paying installments on a house or apartment so that they will own the place in which they live when they stop work and will have something of value to pass on to their children.

Of course, it is business property—shops, factories, offices, hotels—that is the most valuable land of all. In 1993 Just one square meter of commercial land in Hong Kong was valued at around US$20. Land is not just a site for dwellings or workplaces, but a commodity which can be sold, rented out or used as security in order to borrow money which can be used to buy shares or to buy other pieces of land.

Someone who buys land needs to know exactly what rights and obligations are attached to the land. Although it is possible to deal directly with the seller, most people employ a solicitor to handle the complicated business of land transfer, known as conveyancing. In fact, even after the simplifications of 1925, which reduced the system to two kinds of legal estate and four kinds of legal interest, there still exist many kinds of “equitable” interest which the buyer and seller need to know about. For example, even if the freehold you want to buy is registered in the name of only one person, you should make sure the spouse of the freeholder does not have the right to continue living in the property after it has been sold!

When investigating the rights attached to land, solicitors used to examine title deeds —documents recording transfers of the property over many years. In Britain there is now a land registry which makes investigation of title easier because it is a central register describing the land, the landholder, and third party rights. However, not all land in Britain has yet been recorded on the register, and there are some land rights which need not be recorded there. Even if land has been registered, the solicitor still has many things to check, such as possible plans of the local council to build noisy roads near the house. Any mistakes he makes could cost the buyer a lot of money. Conveyancing is one of the areas in which solicitors sometimes get sued by clients.

Дата добавления: 2015-05-26