Real Property and Real Estate
Estates and Co-Ownership
Know fee simple absolute, life estates, and future interests. Tenancy in common has no right of survivorship and allows unequal shares. Joint tenancy requires the four unities of time, title, interest, and possession and carries a right of survivorship. Tenancy by the entirety is a marital form in many states.
Landlord-Tenant
Leases divide possessory interests; know quiet enjoyment, constructive eviction, the implied warranty of habitability, security deposit rules, and holdover remedies.
Deeds and Recording
A deed needs a competent grantor, an identifiable grantee, words of grant, a description, the grantor's signature, delivery, and acceptance. Warranties differ: general warranty covers all defects, special warranty only those during the grantor's ownership, and quitclaim conveys whatever the grantor has with no warranty. Recording acts are race, notice, or race-notice; a bona fide purchaser for value without notice is favored.
Encumbrances and Other Doctrines
Easements may be appurtenant or in gross and arise by express grant, implication, necessity, or prescription; a license is revocable and not an interest in land. Also know covenants and equitable servitudes, mortgages and foreclosure, adverse possession (open, notorious, exclusive, continuous, hostile, for the statutory period), zoning, and eminent domain.
Traps
Delivery is essential; a deed recorded without delivery conveys nothing. A later recorded deed may lose to an earlier unrecorded one if the later buyer had notice. Adverse possession fails if any element is missing.
Worked Example
A sells to B but B does not record. A then sells to C, who records without any notice of B. In a notice or race-notice state, C prevails; in a pure race state, C also prevails because C recorded first.