Welcome, the following information will explain in detail how to claim land and property legally. The UK Land Registry currently holds details of around 21 million registered land plots and properties; in effect it's a massive database of property ownership guaranteed by the land registry itself. In simple terms, this leaves an estimated 7 million unregistered land plot and properties in the UK right now with a combined value of billions of 's. This is not to say all 7 million can easily be claimed ... But taking into account the size of the figures involved here, the likelihood of finding several plots of land and properties that you could claim is very good indeed. According to the Empty Homes Agency there are approximately 900,000 empty homes in Britain of which nearly 800,000 are in London. A sizeable proportion of these are abandoned or derelict. These properties, few of which have traceable owners, are just the type that after carrying out all proper research you may be able to claim from using this guide. These properties will of course at some time have had an owner. It may be that the owner has simply never registered his or her title... However it could also be that the owner has died and left no will and has no relatives or that the owner has never moved away from the area many years ago effectively abandoning the property. These then briefly are some of the types of property and the plots. Which by the following the detailed guidelines within this guide, you could claim as your own via the legal vehicle of adverse possession. We will cover all these points in much more detail later. Another interesting point worthy of mentioning here is the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors figure of over 17,000 plots of land and property that are being illegally claimed every year or around 250 per week. Not all of these would be claims of the scale and type we are going to consider in this guide. However this did lead Charles Harpum of the Law Commission (who helped draft the recent Land registration Act 2002) to recently comment that people claiming land and property had become something of a "national pastime." The legal definition of adverse possession is as follows. "The gaining of title real estate is continuous hostile, open, and notorious possession over a statutory period." Again we'll cover the content of this definition in further detail, as we progress. Initially, the land plots and properties you'll be looking for could be run down or abandoned...Derelict farmhouses or disowned buildings... Properties accessed via an overgrown driveway & rusty gates ... Fields, hidden plots of land.... Even old terraced or detached houses. BUT WHERE DO YOU START? Please read on and I will explain in full following the pages of this guide."