NC Bar: Real Property on the NC Bar

Real Property mixes classic estates doctrine with recording, landlord-tenant, and mortgage rules. The exam rewards careful parsing of conveyances and a firm grip on priority contests.

Estates and future interests

• Fee simple absolute, life estate, fee simple determinable (possibility of reverter), fee simple subject to condition subsequent (right of entry), fee simple subject to executory limitation.
• Remainders (vested or contingent), reversion, executory interests. Apply the Rule Against Perpetuities to contingent remainders and executory interests: the interest must vest, if at all, within 21 years after a life in being.
• Waste, fixtures, and merger - a life tenant who acquires the remainder merges the estates.

Conveyancing and priority

• Deeds require parties, words of grant, a description, and the grantor's signature; delivery with intent controls.
• Recording: North Carolina's statute (G.S. 47-18) is a race statute - the first to record prevails, so a later grantee who records first beats an earlier grantee who did not, even with notice.
• Adverse possession in North Carolina: twenty years at common law, or seven years under color of title with payment of taxes.
• Easements by express grant, implication, necessity, and prescription; covenants run with land if intent, notice, touch and concern, and privity are present.

Worked example

O conveys Blackacre to A, who does not record. O then conveys the same parcel to B, who knows of A's deed but records immediately. Under North Carolina's race statute, B's deed prevails because recording, not notice, determines priority. A is left with a breach-of-warranty claim against O.

Traps

Applying the notice or race-notice rule reflexively instead of checking the state's statute; forgetting that a mortgagor's equity of redemption survives until the sale is confirmed; confusing a possibility of reverter with a right of entry.