Law Commons^™

The Doctrine Of Unilateral Severance And Its Potential Development In Singapore, Zhi Jia Koh

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Co-ownership of land is commonplace in Singapore, and the manner of holding among co-owners has important practical implications. Joint tenants are subject to the rule of survivorship, but what if a joint tenant does not wish to be locked into the survivorship wheel of fortune? A joint tenant may unilaterally sever the joint tenancy by an act operating upon his or her share of the land, but questions remain as to when that occurs and the consequent duration of severance. This article attempts to address these questions with the current alienation-based approach and suggest the possibility of an intention-based approach.

Mitigating Catastrophe Risk For Landowners, Stewart E. Sterk

Articles

Local, national, and global catastrophes entail significant risk for landowners. The government-sponsored National Flood Insurance Program illustrates how subsidizing insurance against catastrophe risk can result in overinvestment in risk-prone properties. Government intervention, however, has largely been a response to the historical failure of the private insurance industry to provide adequate protection against correlated risks, a failure with the potential to generate underinvestment in land and devastate existing owners.

When data is available about the incidence and severity of potential disasters, improvements in technology have made it more feasible for insurers to calibrate premiums and discounts with greater accuracy, and sophisticated …

A Critical Jeffersonian Mind For A Community Reinvestment Bind, Chaz Brooks

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 ("CRA") primarily sought to remedy decades of government sanctioned disinvestment in so-called “redlined communities.” Through the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation and later the Federal Housing Administration, the United States of America created from whole cloth a structure that encouraged and subsidized the explosion of homeownership in white American households. Following decades of racialized wealth generation, the United States had a change of heart. Congress determined that financiers needed a gentle push to invest fairly. Additionally, Congress wanted one thing clear in the drafting of this remedy—it must not allocate credit.

This essay considers how …

Examination Of Eviction Filings In Lancaster County, Nebraska, 2019–2021, Ryan Sullivan

Nebraska College of Law: Faculty Publications

The study examined and analyzed eviction filings and proceedings in Nebraska, with a specific focus on Lancaster County—the home to the State’s capital, Lincoln. The primary objective of this study is to place eviction proceedings under a microscope to gain a better understanding of the volume of evictions in Nebraska, and whether the statutorily mandated processes are being followed. The study also attempts to capture the impact of certain external factors present during the period examined. Such factors include the COVID-19 pandemic and various eviction moratoria in place during 2020 and 2021, as well as the increased availability of legal …

The History Wars And Property Law: Conquest And Slavery As Foundational To The Field, K-Sue Park

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Article addresses the stakes of the ongoing fight over competing versions of U.S. history for our understanding of law, with a special focus on property law. Insofar as legal scholarship has examined U.S. law within the historical context in which it arose, it has largely overlooked the role that laws and legal institutions played in facilitating the production of the two preeminent market commodities in the colonial and early Republic periods: expropriated lands and enslaved people. Though conquest and enslavement were key to producing property for centuries, property-law scholars have constructed the field of property law to be largely …

Race And Property Law, K-Sue Park

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This chapter offers an outline for understanding the key role of race in producing property values in the history of the American property law system. It identifies major developments in the mutually formative relationship between race and property in America that made and remade property interests in America through the processes of 1) dispossessing nonwhites, 2) degrading their homelands, communities, and selves, and 3) limiting their efforts to enter public space and occupy or acquire property within the regime thereby established. First, it describes the use of law to create the two most important forms of property in the colonies …

In West Philadelphia Born And Raised Or Moving To Bel-Air? Racial Steering As A Consequence Of Using Race Data On Real Estate Websites, Nadiyah J. Humber

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Privatizing The Reservation?, Kristen A. Carpenter, Angela R. Riley

Publications

The problems of American Indian poverty and reservation living conditions have inspired various explanations. One response advanced by some economists and commentators, which may be gaining traction within the Trump Administration, calls for the “privatization” of Indian lands. Proponents of this view contend that reservation poverty is rooted in the federal Indian trust arrangement, which preserves the tribal land base by limiting the marketability of lands within reservations. In order to maximize wealth on reservations, policymakers are advocating for measures that would promote the individuation and alienability of tribal lands, while diminishing federal and tribal oversight.

Taking a different view, …

Transactional Real Estate Law: From Contract To Closing, Jacqueline A. Revis, Ronald Brown

NSU Law Seminar Series

This particular seminar is designed to educate attorneys about how to process a real estate transaction from contract to closing, focusing on the current rules and regulations for financed transactions.

• How to competently act as a closing agent for a real estate transaction in Florida
• Review requirements of a title agent
• Discuss difference between being only a title agent and the additional role representing a particular party (buyer or seller)
• Understanding the new closing disclosure form and the difference between a buyer closing disclosure and a seller closing disclosure
• Handling special challenges that arise in the context of real estate …

The Real Doctrine & Covenants, Chad J. Pomeroy

Faculty Articles

Developers have recently begun creating, and attaching to the property they sell to consumers, what is known as a "recovery fee." These recovery fees are "new" in that most lawyers are not familiar with them and in that they seem to operate in a novel manner and are bottomed on novel claims. In essence, they create and levy a fee on subsequent owners each time the property is transferred, which fee purports to reimburse developers for infrastructure and other development costs. Because they seem new, and because they involve transfers from relatively small and unsophisticated parties to relatively large and …

Probate A To Z: Guiding You Through The Statutes, Rules, And Procedures (Click Sharkmedia Below For Video), Adam Scott Goldberg

NSU Law Seminar Series

• Learn about probate court statutes and rules of procedure in Florida
• Understand how Probate issues can impact other areas such as: real estate, family, and debt/creditor law.
• How to handle special challenges that arise in probate cases
• Discuss recent procedural changes in Miami-Dade & Broward Probate Court

Controversies In Tax Law: A Matter Of Perspective (Introduction), Anthony C. Infanti

Book Chapters

This volume presents a new approach to today’s tax controversies, reflecting that debates about taxation often turn on the differing worldviews of the debate participants. For instance, a central tension in the academic tax literature — which is filtering into everyday discussions of tax law — exists between “mainstream” and “critical” tax theorists. This tension results from a clash of perspectives: Is taxation primarily a matter of social science or social justice? Should tax policy debates be grounded in economics or in critical race, feminist, queer, and other outsider perspectives?

To capture and interrogate what often seems like a chasm …

Paradoxes, Parallels And Fictions: The Case For Landlord Tort Liability Under The Revised Uniform Residential Landlord-Tenant Act, Shelby D. Green

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In this article, I show how a coherent legal narrative must capture the revolution's radical policy by abandoning the no tort liability rule, which can be done in a number of ways: an open acknowledgement that the duty to repair creates a new property right that must be enforced by a property rule or more subtly through the use of both traditional and modern tools of jurisprudence, that is, legal fictions, equitable maxims and economic efficiency analysis. This article proceeds with a discussion of the common law landlord-tenant law, the adoption of the implied warranty of habitability, along with the …

Industry Career Guide Ownership Dwellings And Real Estate, Ma. Concepcion G. Latoja, Denise Serrano

Angelo King Institute for Economic and Business Studies (AKI)

This industry career guide on Ownership Dwelling and Real Estate (ODRE) aims to inform readers of the range of career options that are open to those who want to work in the industry. By presenting an array of occupations typically found in this field, the reader is informed of the basic requirements to land a specific job in this industry, the associated job environment and possibilities for job movement either in terms of promotion and/or moving laterally from one type of job to another within the industry. In the context of discussing job prospects, it lays out the issues surrounding …

Reforming Property Law To Address Devastating Land Loss, Thomas W. Mitchell

Faculty Scholarship

Tenancy-in-common ownership represents the most widespread form of common ownership of real property in the United States. Such ownership under the default rules also represents the most unstable ownership of real property in this country. Thousands of tenancy-in-common property owners, including members of many poor and minority families, have lost their commonly-owned property due to court-ordered, forced partition sales as well as much of their real estate wealth associated with such ownership as a result of such sales. Though some scholars and the media have highlighted how thousands of African-Americans have lost an untold amount of property and substantial real …

Why Is Property So Hard?, Chad J. Pomeroy

Faculty Articles

This paper seeks to flesh out the heterogeneity and inherent difficulty of property law and to analyze it in depth. Part I begins this examination by setting up a taxonomy for property law and then describing the heterogeneity inherent in that context and the costs associated with that variability. Real estate law has continually evolved throughout American history — changing from a small, local business to a large, national one, spanning jurisdictional lines and limits — and it is the haphazard and varied nature of this evolution that has created this difficulty and cost. This is notable when contrasted with …

Adr's Place In Foreclosure: Remedying The Flaws Of A Securitized Housing Market, Lydia Nussbaum

Scholarly Works

Millions of Americans lost their homes during the foreclosure crisis, an unprecedented disaster still plaguing local and national economies. A primary factor contributing to the crisis has been the failure of conventional foreclosure procedures to account for the new realities of securitization and the secondary mortgage market, which transformed the traditional borrower-lender relationship. To compensate for the shortcomings of conventional foreclosure procedures and stem the tide of residential foreclosure, state and local governments turned to ADR processes for a solution. Some foreclosure ADR programs, however, have greater potential to avoid foreclosures than others. This Article comprehensively examines the key components …

Godzilla Lives! Or, Nonrecourse Carveouts Run Amok, Marshall E. Tracht

Articles & Chapters

The author of this article discusses two recent cases which deal with unconditional liability on nonrecourse carveouts and spring-ing guaranties. One potential consequence of these decisions: by essentially converting these contingent guaranties to unconditional guaranties, the threat of springing liability disappears and the guaranties cease to have deterrent effects. If the guarantor is li-able whether or not the single purpose entity files for bankruptcy, why not file? The result is likely to be bankruptcy filings and other "misbehavior" by borrowers. Moreover, the analysis used in these cases would put many performing loans into default along with triggering recourse, threatening substantial …

Club Good Influence On Residential Transaction Prices, J. Andrew Hansz, Darren K. Hayunga

Finance Faculty Publications

We examine residential real estate transactions in a market where an additional property right to a club good may have an influence on prices. We find that for single-family property, the market capitalizes approximately 50% of the full value of the extra property right. For condominiums, the amount reduces to approximately 25%. While these amounts are positive, they clearly are significantly lower than full value.

Strategic Default: The Popularization Of A Debate Among Contract Scholars, Meredith R. Miller

Scholarly Works

A June 2010 report estimates that roughly 20% of mortgage defaults in the first half of 2009 were “strategic.” “Strategic default” describes the situation where a home borrower has the financial ability to continue to pay her mortgage but chooses not to pay and walks away. The ubiquity of strategic default has lead to innumerable newspaper articles, blog posts, website comments and editorial musings on the morality of homeowners who can afford to pay but choose, instead, to walk away. This Article centers on the current public discourse concerning strategic default, which mirrors a continuing debate among scholars regarding whether …

The Structural Causes Of Mortgage Fraud, Jim Smith

Scholarly Works

Mortgage fraud, often a violation of federal and state criminal statutes, covers a number of different types of behavior, all of which have the common denominator of conduct that has the intent or effect of impairing the value of residential mortgage loans. Mortgage fraud has become prevalent over the past decade and shows no signs of diminishing despite the collapse of domestic housing markets during the past two years. This paper analyzes the complex relationships between prime mortgage loan markets, subprime markets, and various types of mortgage fraud. This paper concludes that the root causes of mortgage fraud are associated …

Slides: Unquenchable, Robert Glennon

Western Water Law, Policy and Management: Ripples, Currents, and New Channels for Inquiry (Martz Summer Conference, June 3-5)

Presenter: Robert Glennon, Morris K. Udall Professor of Law and Public Policy, James E. Rogers College of Law, University of Arizona

56 slides

Legal And Policy Choices In The Aftermath Of The Subprime And Mortgage Financing Crisis, Gerald Korngold

Articles & Chapters

This essay, delivered at a symposium at the University of South Carolina in October 2008 and forthcoming in South Carolina Law Review, sets out initial thoughts about to the legal and policy choices that decision makers must address in the aftermath of the subprime crisis that has since triggered a global financing crunch. After tracing a narrative of how subprime lending grew into a mortgage financing crisis and then a broader financial dislocation, the essay addresses two issues. First, while it is commonly stated that increased regulation will be required in secondary mortgage markets going forward, the essay explores competing …

Practitioners Need Broader Expertise: Real Estate Law Is Undergoing Profound Changes, John R. Nolon, Shelby D. Green

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article discusses the sweeping modifications to real estate law practice as legislators, courts, and lawyers attempt to accommodate a number of real world challenges. The authors’ discussion analyzes several of these transitioning influences, such as an increase in environmental concerns, shifts in environmental legislation, the subprime mortgage crisis, the effect Kelo v. New London has on the lawyers’ role in facilitating redevelopment, as well as the influence of new E-sign laws has on drafting real estate documents.

Slides: Ecotrust Forests, Bettina Von Hagen

Community-Owned Forests: Possibilities, Experiences, and Lessons Learned (June 16-19)

Presenter: Bettina Von Hagen, Ecotrust Forests, OR

25 slides

Failing Grade: Our Irrelevant Bar Exam, Roger Bernhardt

Publications

This article criticizes the California Bar Exam’s testing of real property. The author argues that the Exam fails to test modern issues relevant to everyday practice.

Where Shall We Live? Class And The Limitations Of Fair Housing Law, Wendell Pritchett

All Faculty Scholarship

This paper examines the effort to secure fair housing laws at the local, state and federal levels in the 1950s, focusing in particular on New York City and state. It will examine the arguments that advocates made regarding the role the law should play in preventing housing discrimination, and the relationship of these views to advocates' understanding of property rights in general. My paper will argue that fair housing advocates had particular conceptions about the importance of housing in American society that both supported and limited their success. By arguing that minorities only sought what others wanted - a single-family …

Electronic Real Estate Documents: Context, Unresolved Cost-Benefit Issues And A Recommended Decisional Process, Sam Stonefield

Faculty Scholarship

This essay begins with a prediction: that electronic real estate documents will soon begin to replace paper documents in many, if not all, phases of residential real estate transactions. It describes the costs and benefits of electronic documents, and the many forces supporting and impeding their widespread adoption. It concludes by urging all those participating in the process to use their best efforts to address the obstacles and to work towards a successful transition to a world of electronic real estate transactions and electronic recording.

Digital Recording Of Real Estate Conveyances, Dale A. Whitman

Faculty Publications

The purpose of this article is to describe how such a revolutionary change in the recording system can take place, and to identify and discuss the major policy issues that must be resolved in order to accomplish it. This change ought to happen. Failure to update the system will result in the continued imposition of unnecessary costs and delays on those who buy, sell, or mortgage real estate in America.

Withholding Tax On Phantom Gain, Alan Appel, Michael Hirschfield

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.