Articles Posted in Tag: property law

By Eli Underwood For unmarried partners and cohabiting couples navigating a highly inflated housing market, pooling financial resources is increasingly the only viable path onto the property ladder. Data from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) indicates their stake among first-time buyers has jumped from 4% in 1985 to 11% in 2025. However, while...

By Eli Underwood Record-high home prices have forced a shift in how buyers enter the real estate market. To afford a standard down payment, unmarried partners and platonic friends routinely pool their cash.  The financial strategy works perfectly on paper. But signing a joint mortgage without the built-in asset protection of a legal marriage...

What is an Ouster (Civ. Code § 843)? An ouster occurs when one tenant wrongful dispossesses or excludes another cotenant or cotenants from the common property. (Zaslow v. Kroenert (1946) 29 Cal.2d 541, 548.) Regardless of whether individuals share property as joint tenants or tenants in common, the property rights of cotenants are usually the...

Generally, every owner of property is liable for injuries on their property when it is not in a reasonably safe condition. (Cody F. v. Falletti (2001) 92 Cal.App.4th 1232.) If a party was a co-owner and jointly in possession of the premises, they would be equally responsible for the condition of the premises and...

Sir William Blackstone is a titan in the field of legal jurisprudence. His 1765 work, Commentaries on the Laws of England, is his most famous legal treatise, forming the backbone of common law analysis as modern lawyers understand it today. Without his efforts centuries ago, our conceptions of property, individual rights, and governmental authority...

The purpose of this article is to address the goals that California’s Surplus Land Act was designed to accomplish. The article will address the prior version of the Surplus Land Act, the changes to definitions made in 2019, and provide a big-picture perspective on its aims. In 2019, the California Legislature re-made the Surplus...