> The latter case, of squatters gaining full legal title to a piece of property, is extraordinarily rare, and as I understand it the cases all tend to be marginal (like: abutments of adjacent rural properties changing hands).
The marginal cases are more common certainly, but the full version does happen. There's one that comes up on Reddit every so often of someone living in a home that had been abandoned in the 2008 crisis and presumably just written off by the legal owners (sounded like it had been owned via multiple levels of bankrupt property companies) for long enough that they claimed ownership, apparently successfully.
The one I see on Reddit is "Texas guy buys $300,000 house for $16" (the registration fee), but he was evicted less than a year later. I'd love to see the case where someone succeeded in holding the house! I did go looking, but it's just yard fence after yard fence in the court cases.
The marginal cases are more common certainly, but the full version does happen. There's one that comes up on Reddit every so often of someone living in a home that had been abandoned in the 2008 crisis and presumably just written off by the legal owners (sounded like it had been owned via multiple levels of bankrupt property companies) for long enough that they claimed ownership, apparently successfully.