If you squat in a vacant property, does the law give you the house for free? Well, sort of

By Cathy Sherry, Professor in Law, Macquarie University

Nothing excites law students like the idea of a free house. Or alternatively, enrages them. It depends on their politics. As a result, academics condemned to teaching property law find it hard to resist the “doctrine of adverse possession”. The fact that a person can change the locks on someone else’s house, wait 12 years, and claim it as their own, makes students light up in a way that the Strata Schemes Management Act never will.

The idea of “squatters’ rights” has received a lot of media…

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