Consider yourself lucky that you can reliably trace land ownership for centuries. Eastern Europe went through multiple upheavals in last 100 years and every time the wheel of history turned, quite a lot of land was dispossessed/repossessed by law.
In Slovakia we basically ended up with two versions of land registry (called register "C" and "E") and the ongoing effort to reconcile them. Many properties are said to be "nevysporiadané" = "not settled up" which means all the owners are not known - previous landowner died or emigrated and it waits for their descendants to claim it. It isn't possible to build anything on these lots.
In east germany, there are strange constellations, were someone might own the ground, but not the house upon it and vice versa. Some pieces of land were bought, before the original "owning" aristocrats descendants laid claim to them.
In west germany, there were, originally very small, medieval fields, so a "Flurbereinigung" happened several times. This led to larger fields to work on, but below, some of them still are patchwork, paid yearly for, some only leaseholds from the church, some even still paid in natural products (deputats -> m^3 wood, grain, sugar) as per contract.
Some parts of lands have owners, but due to the exponential nature of "Erbengemeinschaften" (community of heirs), the land is splitting up more with each generation of inheritance and some of the heirs do not want to lay claim to the ever smaller pieces of land in the middle of nowhere, due to the juristic costs. Which in the long run leads to atomized "unclaimed" land.
Also the church runs alot of old folks homes, and thus persuades old people to transfer there land to the church, so in some towns, half the houses are owned by the catholic church, the children renting there parents home from them. Strange constellations.
> Also the church runs alot of old folks homes, and thus persuades old people to transfer there land to the church, so in some towns, half the houses are owned by the catholic church
Is the church exempt from property tax in Germany?
If so this sounds like a return to 'mortmain' principle of middle ages which caused a lot of conflict between government and church historically:
England developed quicker than the rest of Europe because the King limited the accumulation of tax exempt real estate by the church. The church was essentially largest absentee corporate land holder in Europe. It left large quantities of land vacant and did not contribute public fees towards infrastructure improvements.
This split ownership reminds me of a similar situation in the USA, where different entities can own the surface rights and mineral rights. What gets weird, is owning the mineral rights legally entitles you to use the surface (to a limited degree) to access the minerals.
This is pretty common in the Rockies in Colorado, although not usually exercised! Many, many lots are zoned M for Mining and the situation you mentioned applies just like that.
It is a major factor why Blacks have lost ownership of farmland in the United States. Rather than try to explain it myself, here is an excerpt from "Mine!" by Jacob Heller and James Salzman:
> Currently, Black farmers constitute less than 1 percent of American farmers, and Black families continue to lose farms at a rate three times that of whites. The cause of this dramatic farm loss starts with inheritance law, in particular the consequences for family ownership when someone dies without making a will. Many poor Black farmers in the South were suspicious of local white lawyers, and for good reason, so they never made wills. This suspicion continues today, even among some wealthy Black people. Aretha Franklin and Prince could well have afforded the very best attorneys, yet both passed away without making wills. Overall, three-quarters of Black people do not have wills, more than double the percentage of whites.
> The result for Black-owned land in the Southeast is that over a quarter is now heir property, averaging eight co-owners, five of whom live outside the region. Amazingly, more land in Mississippi is owned by Black people living in Chicago than by those living in Mississippi itself. …
> Inheritance law imposes enormous costs on Black people—indeed, on anyone who does not write a will. When you die without a will, the state splits ownership among people the law designates as heirs, in a specified priority: spouses and children, grandchildren, parents, siblings, and then more remote relatives.
> Partition sales … are the primary way that most heir property is lost. Partition sales are not just of historical interest. Across the South, heir property currently makes up a third of remaining Black-owned farmland—roughly 3.5 million acres worth about $30 billion. …
> In 1887 John Brown bought eighty acres of land in Rankin County, Mississippi. He was part of the great wave of freed slaves who invested their life savings in farmland. … When he died in 1935, he did not leave a will. Ownership of his land split among his wife and nine children. In time they all died, also without wills, so the land was split further among grandchildren. … In 1978 Ruth Brown asked a court to divide the farm so she would own her share of the land outright—a manageable forty-five acres out of John’s original eighty. The other sixty-six Brown heirs would still co-own the balance, in shares ranging from 1/18th of the farm down to a tiny 1/19,440th. The court agreed to partition the parcel, but not by physically dividing the land. Instead, the judge ordered the entire farm sold and the money partitioned among the heirs according to their ownership fractions.
> As often happens in such forced partition sales, a single outside company was the only bidder. In Brown’s case, it was a local white-owned lumber company that wanted to cut the timber.
> Even though the family collectively valued the farm far above its auction price, neither Brown nor any other heir placed a bid. Why? Partly because state law often requires the bid to be fully or substantially paid in cash on auction day, a rule that makes bidding impossible for most ordinary owners. Partly because there was no simple way for the Brown heirs to organize a joint family bid that pulled together resources from the scattered owners. Many heirs did not even know they were owners. And no single Brown heir could top the lumber company’s lowball bid. This is commonplace. When a judge orders land auctioned on courthouse steps, the deal is final, even though the price is usually far below what is considered fair market value in an ordinary transaction.
Isn't there any law saying that "if no one claims it for N years, the state takes it" / "if someone else uses a place for N years and no one else claims it, that person can claim it?" [1]
I had the same thought. Reading the Wikipedia page for the respective Italian law [1], it seems to me (but IANAL) that it would only apply to ownership of material things, not apply to monetary claims.
However, Italy also abolished all noble titles with the fall of the monarchy in 1946 -- I would have also expected that fiefs and any associated claims had been extinguished at the same time...
Unsure about Italy, but common law has the doctrine of laches, which many US jurisdictions recognize. It effectively says, "Sure, you have a claim, but you sat on it too long so tough luck."
It would be a bit nasty to make a such law considering that the "state"(usually the communist state) stole the property and the rightful owners were persecuted.
Add to that the Hungarian inheritance rules - properties were divided evenly between the heirs, so I can now own a 13/6240 of an agricultural field. The farm still pays me a small yearly dividend and offers to buy my share, but that's really everything what can be done with it.
Historically, divisible estates were the norm in most of Europe in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. By the time the High Middle Ages rolls around, England and France switch to a system of primogeniture, granting all the lands to the oldest son. However, in Germany, divisibility remained the norm. This resulted in a tendency of lands in the Holy Roman Empire to proliferate as compared to France or England.
I don't know any specifics about Hungary, but I presume that the general norm is as in Germany rather than England/France.
This is only slightly worse than Slovakia's official online Cadastral (property ownership) map, which still requires using Internet Explorer and downloading an ActiveX Plugin.
https://mapa.katasterportal.sk/kapor2/index.asp
I'm still trying to find a way to access it from Linux without going through a VM.
I found my great grandfather and great granduncle listed on what seem to be (from skimming autotranslations) missing landowner documents in the Czech Republic, dated as recently as the beginning of 2021 (web version linked below). Which was surprising to me, since they immigrated to the US around 1905, before the obvious 20th century upheavals. I guess unless property is valuable enough for someone (including the state) to invest effort in securing ownership of, it can sit with unclear ownership forever, more or less.
https://www.hlidamsikatastr.cz/Katastr/Neznami-vlastnici says unclaimed land will be forfeited to the state in 2023, I guess this must be highly specific to the Czech Republic. Still surprising to me that it'd take 100+ years!
> which means all the owners are not known - previous landowner died or emigrated and it waits for their descendants to claim it. It isn't possible to build anything on these lots
In the U.S. there is no central registrar, deeds are recorded at local level, and owners are regularly found by collecting property tax. Back tax is tracked independently of ownership so if true owner fails to pay tax within a few years there is lien or foreclosure.
I'm guessing in Slovakia they might only tax sales or income of property rather than passive enclosure? If back taxes are levied on parcel the owners should immediately make themselves known.
"The Earth belongs in usufruct to the living. The dead have neither powers nor rights over it" - Thomas Jefferson
There are large swaths of land in the US which are under ownership but unusable because the owners are absentee and the cost and complexity of locating the owner or pursuing a lein are both greater than the value of the property. In my part of the country there are places where this situation has persisted for fifty years, as the auction value of the property is only in the hundreds of dollars per acre and back property tax in the same range ($16 per year)... and these are properties under modern plats. Dairy farms expand acre by acre, sometimes hiring private investigators in an effort to locate owners of adjacent lots to make a buyout offer. This isn't really all that unusual in the rural west, it's a legacy of the post-WWII suburban real estate boom.
Even in higher property value areas I would be surprised to see a tax delinquency action taken after just a few years. The administrative cost is substantial.
> In my part of the country there are places where this situation has persisted for fifty years, as the auction value of the property is only in the hundreds of dollars per acre
At 2021 market valuations, not lower public assessments?
> Even in higher property value areas I would be surprised to see a tax delinquency action taken after just a few years. The administrative cost is substantial
In some areas owner only has a few years then legal department will process tax sale within few months. It's true that in many areas property tax less than 1% of true market value. Prior to 1930s when no state or local government was collecting sales tax it used to be closer 3%.
Right, actual sale prices range $300-$800 per acre for many failed Southwestern (NM, CO, AZ, southeastern CA, probably UT and Eastern OR but I'm less knowledgeable in that area) suburban developments. Often they are picked up by sketchy flippers who sell them to poorly informed buyers at "highly inflated" rates of say $3000 seller financed (e.g. $99 down, $50 per month on terms sometimes as long as 30 years). Searching "land investment" will turn up a bunch of these. While described as "near town" they are often over an hour out with poor access and no utilities. Ironically the tax assessed value on these is usually more in line with actual valuation as they have seen zero or negative price change over time.
Perhaps this is different in other parts of the country, I've just never heard of a tax sale running that quickly. Typically in the city here it takes a decade or more, especially if the ownership situation is at all complex.
In Slovakia we basically ended up with two versions of land registry (called register "C" and "E") and the ongoing effort to reconcile them. Many properties are said to be "nevysporiadané" = "not settled up" which means all the owners are not known - previous landowner died or emigrated and it waits for their descendants to claim it. It isn't possible to build anything on these lots.