What determines the years required for adverse possession?

Abstract

Adverse Possession allows squatters to gain the land title after living on it for a prescribed period. Under the doctrine of Adverse Possession, the landowner cannot take any legal action against the squatters who have possessed the land over a period of time. Among the research on Adverse Possession, most of them focuses on justification. None has analyzed how the years required for Adverse Possession are determined. The years required for Adverse Possession are actually different under different jurisdictions. This study is the first to investigate the regular patterns of the years required for Adverse Possession. It aims to explain the difference on the years required for Adverse Possession among different jurisdictions. This study will first analyze the 50 states in the United States. The patterns identified from the U.S. case study will be generalized in other countries. This study observes that all states with the shortest years required for Adverse Possession have a higher urban population growth rate, higher urban economic prosperity, lower rural economic prosperity, and higher legal system efficiency. These observations are confirmed statistically in a regression analysis. The regression analysis also illustrates that the urban population growth rates are highly correlated with the years required for Adverse Possession. States with a higher urban population growth rate would benefit more from Adverse Possession. They would shorten the years required for Adverse Possession so long as the marginal benefit generated from Adverse Possession is larger than the marginal loss. Although Adverse Possession could increase the certainty of land title and facilitate the land transfer, it also incur monitoring costs for the landowner to protect their land from potential adverse possessors. Due to the greater benefit generated from Adverse Possession, the states with a higher urban population growth rate would have greater pressure and higher incentive to shorten the years required for Adverse Possession. States with shorter years required for Adverse Possession are mainly located in the west than in the east. This could be explained by higher urban population growth rate in the west. This finding is then applied to Hong Kong to predict the years required for Adverse Possession. It is found that the years required for Adverse Possession will maintain at around 12-13 years from 2020 to 2030 and gradually increase to 23 years in 2070.