Real Property: Estates, Recording, and Land Use
What the exam tests
Real property covers estates and future interests, conveyancing, recording acts, mortgages, landlord-tenant law, easements, covenants, and adverse possession. Minnesota-specific recording rules can appear, but general race-notice doctrine is heavily tested.
Core rules
- Estates: fee simple absolute, fee tail (rare), life estate, fee simple determinable, fee simple subject to condition subsequent, and fee simple subject to executory limitation. Future interests include reversion, possibility of reverter, right of entry, and executory interest.
- Deed requirements: identification of parties and land, words of grant, signature of grantor, and delivery with intent. Recording protects against later purchasers.
- Recording: race, notice, and race-notice statutes. Minnesota is a race-notice state: a later purchaser wins if without notice and records first.
- Notice: actual, constructive (record), and inquiry. The shelter rule protects a transferee from a protected purchaser.
- Easements: express, implied, prescriptive, and by necessity. Covenants require writing, intent, touch and concern, and notice; equitable servitudes may be enforced without damages.
- Adverse possession: actual, open and notorious, exclusive, continuous, and hostile for the statutory period.
Worked example
O conveys Blackacre to A, who does not record. O then conveys to B, who pays value and has no notice of A. B records first. Under a race-notice statute, B wins because B is a subsequent BFP who recorded before A. If B had inquiry notice because A was in visible possession, B would lose.
Traps
Do not ignore possession as inquiry notice. The shelter rule can protect a purchaser who had notice. A mortgage is a lien, not a transfer of title in title-theory states.