A Brief History of Real Estate: The Fee Simple Ownership

Arthur Wellesley (1769-1852), Duke of Wellington, is reputed to have been the one to exclaim 'All good factors come from England, but cavalry is not a single of them' whereas facing Napoleon's French Army at Waterloo on June 18, 1815. Wellesley had learnt his military trade in India applying his study of the art of war and had became a master of the reverse-slope tactic - keeping his forces screened from artillery fire behind the brow of a hill. At Waterloo, nonetheless, Wellesley's Armies had been outwitted by Napoleon. The French Emperor had imitated Wellesley's tactics by positioning 200 heavy artillery guns behind a ridge at La Haye Sainte. When the Hussars and Dragoons cavalrymen led by Lord Uxbridge attacked in the popular Charge of the Scots Greys, Napoleon commanded the guns on the topline of the ridge and one particular of the epic artillery bombardments in background started. It was at this very moment, at the height of the Charge and even though his 3,000 cavalrymen had been getting slaughtered by the rapid artillery fire of Napoleon's heavy guns, that the phlegmatic English General is reputed to have exclaimed his now popular remark, directed at Lord Uxbridge who had apparently ordered the Charge without having Wellesley knowing it. The day was saved by Gebhard von Blucher (1742-1819), Field Marshal of Prussia, who led the assault of the Kaiser's Prussian Cavalry against the French perfect wing, therefore causing the complete French line to collapse.

Wellesley's renowned remark has been retouched a variety of times all through the years, based on one's point of view. The British dropped the second portion - the reference to the ill-fated cavalry charge - thus producing the preferred brief version 'All very good issues come from England' - period. When about a century later Britain had the unwise notion of attacking the Ottoman Empire and the British and French Armies had been fighting the Turks side-by-side in WWI, Common Mustapha Kemal - the English-speaking Commander of the Turkish Garrison and victorious defender of Gallipoli - paraphrased the English dictum just after 289 days of siege by turning it, somewhat deprecatingly, into: "No fine factors ever come from England". And Mahatma Gandhi all through his teachings of non-violent conflicts resolutions makes reference to the fact that "All good things come from India".

Alas, no matter what your point of view is, I shall submit to readers of my Blog that "at least two fine issues comes from England" : Fee Very simple Ownership and Organized Real Estate.

English actual estate law (or 'Estate Law' as it was known back then) was imported, through colonization, into the earlier forms of law in the U.S.A., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Several of these states, or their territories, have due to the fact modified this historical law, to varying degrees. A study of the old feudal land system of England provides us with an invaluable glimpse of legal history regulating the most important asset of them all: land. In medieval times, land was the sole form of wealth and it depended primarily on possession. You had it, you owned it. You wanted it, you fought for it. You located it, you kept it. There had been no courts or police force ready to recognize or enforce "legal rights" as we know them these days. All this changed with the Norman conquest of England in 1066. William decreed that he owned all of the land in England by right of conquest. Not a single acre of England was to be exempted from this huge expropriation. This sudden vacuum of privately-held land was promptly filled by a selection of huge land grants offered by the new King to either his Norman officers or to those of the English who were ready to recognize him as king. The device utilised by the King to manage and administer his land was that of tenure. Tenure was the crucial component of the feudal technique. The King struck a bargain with a Lord for a substantial chunk of land. The Lords that held their tenure directly from the King had been called Tenants-in-chief. It was this group of persons who formed the basis of English aristocracy and started, by the course of action of subletting the King's land, the implementation of the feudal method.

Tenures had been of a selection of duration known as "estates" and the Fee Rather simple Estate was the most extensive and permitted the Tenant to sell or to convey by will or be transferred to the Tenant's heir if he died. In modern day law, nearly all land is held in fee uncomplicated and this is as close as one particular can get to absolute ownership in standard law. It was in this context that the British started their dominion more than the seas and their explorations which led to the present day nations of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States of America. The concept of producing an informal association of nearby real estate agents originated in the United States in the 1880s, and by the turn of the century about 15 True Estate Boards had been established. The National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) was formed in the U.S. in 1908 with 19 boards and 1 state association. Organized actual estate in Canada is practically as old as the nation itself. The highly 1st Genuine Estate Board was set up in 1888 in the growing community of Vancouver. Back then, a commercial lot on Hornby Street near the Hotel Vancouver sold for $600. The Vancouver Board - as it was recognized then - was active until the start of the Initially Globe War, when operations had been suspended. It resumed in 1919, and has been operating ever given that.

The distinction of the oldest, continuous operating Board belongs to Winnipeg, Manitoba. It began in 1903, and the Winnipeg True Estate Board was the to begin with in Canada to celebrate its 100th anniversary. The Toronto Board was incorporated in 1920, followed by boards in Ottawa, Hamilton, Regina and Victoria in 1921. Additional than half of the existing Genuine Estate Boards in Canada were designed soon after 1955, in element considering that of the evolution of the "Photo Co-Op System" that was introduced in 1951. That was the forerunner of today's MLS®, introduced in 1962. The Co-op Program not only created a want for an organization to establish guidelines and promote co-operation among agents, but also to present funds to operate a true estate board. That's when technology 1st altered the true estate sector.