Geography 5361 Geography and Real Estate

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Geography 5361 Geography and Real Estate

• 12.45-2.00 T.Th. 135 Blegen Hall
• Rod Squires, 546 Social Sciences Building
• Tel. [phone]
• E-mail squires_at_umn.edu
• Office Hours before and after class and by
  appointment

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Real Estate

• Like most terms a hodgepodge of meanings
  depends on context contingent
• Real (property) is there an unreal? private
  (property)
• Estate An amount of land
• Estate A collection (bundle) of legal rights
• Estate An inheritance
• Real Estate Land and Buildings
• Real Estate License (Minnesota Department of
  Commerce)
• 90 hours of approved real estate education
• apply for a license with a broker to the
  Department of Commerce 
• Course 1 (Kaplan)

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Real Property Rights

• Rights legally defined and protected behavior
• rights to do something
• rights to prevent something being done to you
• Defines your behavior in relation to everyone
  elses behavior
• Thus your rights are enforceable against others
• Real property land and buildings air, water,
  wildlife, subsurface
• Private property can be intangible ideas,
  smell, noise
• Who can possess rights individual, couple,
  corporation, government unit
• How can those rights be possessed fee title,
  lease,
• How can those rights be exercised land use,
  conveyed

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Real Property Rights

• A bundle of rights includes legal permissions
• The right to control use of the property
• The right to benefit from the property quiet
  enjoyment
• The right to exclude others from the property
  trespass
• The right to convey all or part of the rights
• Concurrently, with the permissions come
  responsibilities and obligations

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Some Gross Statistics

• United States households - have 9.6 trillion or
  16 of their wealth in real estate
• Farmers have another 1.3 trillion of equity in
  their farms
• Total household wealth in real estate nearly 20
  of household assets
• The World Bank estimates that real property
  values account for between one-half and
  three-quarters of wealth in most economies
• In the United States 79 of residents live in
  urban areas

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Geography Studies

• How societies organize space and behavior
• How entities with the right to use land exercise
  those rights to produce goods and provide
  services and thus create landscapes

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Organization of Space 

• Jurisdictions (governments) 
• Organized spatially
• Horizontally
• Vertically
• Historical Trend
• Increasing number 
• Decreasing size 

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Organization of Space 

• Real property
• Land surface
• Subsurface
• Water
• Air
• Wildlife
• Organized spatially
• Horizontally
• Vertically
• Organized temporally 

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Organization of Behavior - Law

• Level of Jurisdiction (Census Bureau)
• Federal (USA.gov)
• State (Northstar)
• Local county, city, township (Northstar)
• Branch of Government
• Federal Legislative
• Federal Executive
• Federal Judicial
• Subject Matter US Code, CFR

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All A Product of Disjointed IncrementalismWe
muddle through
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Personal Data

• My wife and I possess fee title,
• as joint tenants, to a single family dwelling on
  a 4.7acre parcel adjoining
• Hornbeam Lake in the City of
• Sunfish Lake, Dakota County, MN
• not an office, an apartment, a townhouse, a
  condominium, or an industrial warehouse

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Personal Transactions

• We acquired title to this real property in 2001
  by warranty deed from another couple
• We acquired a 30 yr fixed rate mortgage to buy
  the property and, in December 2002, paid off that
  mortgage and took out another
• At the same time we acquired a home equity line
  of credit

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Personal Questions

• What legal rights do we possess in the land,
  water, minerals, air, wildlife?
• How can we use the land surface? (How can we not
  use the land surface?)
• What are our expectations and obligations in
  owning that real property?

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For Each Parcel of Land

• Type of real property land surface, water,
  wildlife, minerals, air with a location and
  spatial extent
• Involves assemblage of legal entities with power
• to acquire, possess, exercise, and convey rights
  to use
• to regulate how rights can be acquired,
  possessed, exercised, and conveyed
• A history of possession of rights to use and to
  convey
• A history of the how the rights to use have been
  exercised
• Unique financing arrangements

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Introduction

• Through lectures, field trips, and personal
  research the course will examine the nature and
  history of real property ownership in the United
  States with special reference to Minnesota
• The focus will be on the mechanistic, legalistic,
  and historical characteristics of ownership and
  not on either the uses to which real property has
  been put or the philosophical, sociological, or
  economic aspects of ownership or use
• More attention will be paid to the published and
  unpublished primary materials that characterizes
  the nature of land ownership than to the
  secondary literature

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Land Use in the United States
Major Uses of the Land 2002
Land Use and Cover
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