Property ownership

“ Jurists do not quite agree as to the full extent of a man’s interest in, and control of, the property he acquires. There are different theories as to the real title to property; most all, however, agree that occupation, united with labor, is the best ground of a title to exclusive ownership of property. But how long will this ownership or control continue? During lifetime, or for a longer period? ”

“ It has control over property within its limits; and the condition of ownership of real estate therein, whether the owner be stranger or citizen, is subjection to its rules concerning the holding, the transfer, liability to obligations, private or public, and the modes of establishing titles thereto. ”

“ The owners of property bulwark themselves with certain prerogatives that have proved of the greatest importance in the conservation of property interests. Speaking broadly, there are four characteristic features of the shares of income which are derived from the ownership of property. ”

“ As the company may not be protected in its actual investment, if the value of its property be plainly less, so the making of a just return for the use of the property involves the recognition of its fair value if it be more than its cost. The property is held in private ownership, and it is that property, and not the original cost of it, of which the owner may not be deprived without due process of law. ”

“ I.13 If things were always owned in fee simple, i.e. if there were no division of ownership,—no partnership rights, no shares, and no stock companies,—there would be little practical need to distinguish property from wealth; and as a matter of fact, in the rough popular usage, any article of wealth, and especially real estate, is often inaccurately called a "piece of property." ”

“ The term 'property' is used in a comprehensive sense and includes all objects or rights which are susceptible of ownership. The term 'interest' refers to the extent of ownership, that is, to the estate or the quality and quantum of ownership by the surviving spouse or other person, of particular property.' S.Rep., supra, Pt. ”

“ To own is to have the right of property in; to possess is to have that right in actual exercise; to occupy is to have possession and use, with some degree of permanency, with or without ownership. A man occupies his own house or a room in a hotel; a man may own a farm of which he is not in possession because a tenant occupies it and is determined to hold it; the proprietor owns the property, but the tenant is in possession. ”

“ ILLUSTRATION.—An illustration that gives us the idea of property will make our definition clear. A takes his shoes to a cobbler to be repaired. When he calls for them, he does not have the price for the work, and the cobbler refuses to give them up. Both A and the cobbler have a property right in the shoes. The right to absolute ownership is in A, that is his property right. The temporary possession, however, is in the cobbler, and he may hold the shoes under the lien for repairs indefinitely and until he receives his compensation. The lien is his property right. ”

“ Yet where is the citizen that does not gladly exchange all the steadfast earth-bound property he has, and invest it in this more beneficial and productive possession? Trover and trespass may be maintained for it, contracts may be made with regard to it, transfers may take place of it-in short, there is no criterion of property or ownership, that may not be applied to what is regarded as having no substantial existence. ”

“ The rapid growth of property values during recent years has accentuated and emphasized the conflict between work and ownership. On the one hand, are the people who devote their time and energy to the production of wealth. On the other hand are the people who own income-yielding property. The workers receive a wage or a salary; the owners receive payments of rent, interest and dividends. Many of the workers are growing clamorous over "human rights." The property owners, persistent, and ever watchful, urge the "rights of property." ”

“ The régime of contract, at present so far extended that the right of property in movables is recognized only as having arisen by exchange of services or products under agreements, or by gift from those who had acquired it under such agreements, may be further extended so far that the products of the soil will be recognized as property only by virtue of agreements between individuals as tenants and the community as land-owner. Even now, among ourselves, private ownership of land is not absolute. ”

“ We are testing the ordinance by its extreme possibilities to show how in its tendency and instances it enables the convenience or purpose of one set of property owners to control the property right of others, and property determined, as the case may be, for business or residence,-even, it may be, the kind of business or character of residence. One person having a two-thirds ownership of a block may have that power against a number having a less collective ownership. ”

“ City real estate was not subject to the extreme fluctuating processes which so disordered the value of rural land. All of the tendencies and currents of the times favored the building up of an aristocracy based upon ownership of city property. ”

“ Another way is ownership of land, capital and consumer goods which enable the owner to live without labor on the products resulting from the labor of others.
Owners of property and wealth receive an income because they are owners. They may be very young or very old, able-bodied or helpless. Their livelihood comes to them not because of anything they do, but because of the property titles which they own.
The owner of land may collect rent. The owner of capital may collect interest. The owner of an enterprise may collect profits. Each lives by owning.
Workers produce goods and services. ”

“ That act provides that an owner of a large estate may sell to his tenants the holdings they occupy, and his untenanted land to any one who desires to buy it, in such tracts and at such prices as may be agreed upon, corresponding to the income now derived from that particular property. No landlord can sell a few acres here and there of good land under this act, although, of course, he is at liberty to dispose of any part of his estate at any time at any price that he may consider proper. ”

“ The difficulty, indeed, of late years, has been not to find sellers but purchasers of the land, and it is not to be supposed that even if you were to take away every check, and make every landowner an absolute owner, he would at once rush into the market and sell his property. ”

“ Why should we not live in our own houses? Why should we not have a little share in the land, as much, at least, as we can pay for?... Can an owner of this kind of property be permitted to refuse to sell? ”

“ Fortunately for the owner, he possesses town property in addition to his landed estates, so that the question with him is not, as it is with many land owners, how to find the necessary capital to cultivate the land, but, having found the capital, how to expend it in farming, so as to produce a proper return. ”

“ It is to give the soil its value every year; it is, by annually renewed creation, to prevent the diminution or destruction of the value of a piece of land. Admitting, then, that property is rational and legitimate,—admitting that rent is equitable and just,—I say that he who cultivates acquires property by as good a title as he who clears, or he who improves; and that every time a tenant pays his rent, he obtains a fraction of property in the land entrusted to his care, the denominator of which is equal to the proportion of rent paid. ”

“ Even the person to whom the rent is paid is in many cases—probably, in England, in most cases—not the full owner, but only a life owner, or a trustee, whose powers of disposing of the property are of a strictly limited nature. ”

“ While gross rents are fixed by competition, the question arises how do bidders determine what they can pay? The basis differs radically between business property which earns income for the occupant as well as the owner, and residence property, which for the occupant consumes income only. ”

“ The purchaser draws boundaries, fences himself in, and says, “This is mine; each one by himself, each one for himself.” Here, then, is a piece of land upon which, henceforth, no one has a right to step, save the proprietor and his friends; which can benefit nobody, save the proprietor and his servants. ”

“ On the other hand, it is equally evident that the same proprietors could not overestimate the value of their property, in order to increase their incomes beyond the limits of the law, since the tenants and farmers, with their old leases in their hands, would enter a protest. ”

“ But since all have an equal right of occupancy, every man is by the same title a proprietor. Every man has a right to an income equal to a fraction of his product. If, then, the laborer is obliged by the right of property to pay a rent to the proprietor, the proprietor is obliged by the same right to pay the same amount of rent to the laborer ”

“ The full and true value of the property is the amount that the owner would be entitled to receive as just compensation upon a taking of that property by the state or the United States in the exertion of the power of eminent domain. ”

“ Our law for the distribution of intestate estates occasions a frequent division of landed property, and prevents monopolies of land. But in opposition to these we have labored under many disadvantages. ”

“ The owner grants a lease for a long period of time, usually ninety-nine years, for a ground rent, which is notoriously below the true economic rent of the land, subject to the condition that the leaseholder must erect upon the land and keep in good repair certain buildings, which on expiry of the lease will become the property of the ground owner. ”

“ Of the realty companies, the Park Realty Company was organized to 'work, develop, sell, convey, mortgage, or otherwise dispose of real estate; to lease, exchange, hire, or otherwise acquire property; to erect, alter, or improve buildings ”

“ Toullier: "Property is a right, a legal power; possession is a fact." The tenant, the farmer, the commandite, the usufructuary, are possessors; the owner who lets and lends for use, the heir who is to come into possession on the death of a usufructuary, are proprietors. If I may venture the comparison: a lover is a possessor, a husband is a proprietor. ”

“ The interest accruing from the funded property or the rent of the lands at certain periods was to be employed to purchase other estates, other parks and manors in the neighbourhood or farther off, so that the prospect of the future demesne that was to devolve at some distant time to the unborn lord of acres, swelled and enlarged itself, like a sea, circle without circle, vista beyond vista, till the imagination was staggered, and the mind exhausted. ”

“ Such statutes are universally in force and are general in their application, facts of which the land owner must take account in providing for the management of his property and safeguarding his interest in it. ”

“ Titles to estates can be made with greater facility, and it may be presumed that it will not be necessary to make the expensive and redundant conveyances which appear to be required in the transfer of real property at home. ”

“ It seems to us little less than absurd to say that a settler or any other person by acquiring a right to be preferred in the purchase of property, provided a sale is made by the owner, thereby acquires a right to compel the owner to sell, or such an interest in the property as to deprive the owner of the power to control its disposition. ”

“ In a devise of real and personal property, the law makes a distinction as to the two estates, in the construction of devisees; and, when technical language is used, the devisee takes an absolute estate in the personal, and a limited estate, or an estate tail, in the real property. ”

“ The doctrine that notice to the owner is given by seizure of the thing, rests upon the presumption that the owners of property retain possession of it themselves, or place it in the care and management of persons who will represent them and communicate to them any proceedings taken against their interest in relation to it. ”

“ But when two-thirds, or thereabouts, of ninety years has passed, and the slow, gradual increment of fortune comes, how seldom and how little do the owners find themselves the better for their long-expected good. In almost every case the property has been negotiated or encumbered, turned to some account by way of fines or premiums or mortgages, or any of the methods that the law provides for eating up the land. ”

“ Those, therefore, who acquire personal property, acquire only what will last about a generation, longer or shorter. Such property is quickly converted into money—it perishes and is gone. But land is hedged round with numerous guards which protect it from hasty spoliation. ”

“ Let us admit, then, with the most careful writers, that if transient property, or the right of preference resulting from occupation, existed prior to the establishment of civil society, permanent property, as we know it to-day, is the work of civil law. It is the civil law which holds that, when once acquired, property can be lost only by the action of the proprietor, and that it exists even after the proprietor has relinquished possession of the thing, and it has fallen into the hands of a third party. ”