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Originally Posted by Mycropht
I am curious what is the longest period a piece of land has been continually legally owned by heirs or legal buyers without any “funny” breaks. I do not think it is very long. Surely it would get messy if you dig enough into the past.
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In the developed world, land records go back hundreds of years. Records in England will go back to 1066; sometimes before. The abstract of title that came with my house begins in 1818 (when the Miami indians gave by treaty the land in my county to the United States, and contains a record of every transfer since then. There's nothing messy about it at all, although I wouldn't call it gripping reading: in 1821, a 100 acres or so were sold to a man who apparently farmed it; he died in 1865 and it passed to his daughter and then his granddaughter; in 1923, she sold it to a trust company, which platted it and built a subdivision; two vacant plats were sold in 1950 to someone who built a house in 1951...the house changed hands three times until I bought it in 2003.
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