Group Land Ownership Bill
This extends the option of land ownership in Neufreistadt to couples
and groups of citizens. Among others, this allows joint ownership of
land by people in committed relationships, social, educational, and
religious organizations.
1. Plots of land in Neufreistadt may be owned by couples or groups of
citizens. All members must be citizens before joining the group.
2. A member's citizenship is maintained if the area of the group land
divided by the number of citizen members plus any Neufreistadt land
that the citizen owns outside of group is equal or more than 128 m2.
3. If the citizen leaves a land holding group they have two months to
reestablish their holdings to meet the above criteria.
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This bill was passed by the RA on October 7, 2006. Prior to this time, all land deeds were recorded in the name of the individual who owned the land, even though prior to Ver 1.12 that ownership had to be implemented by the citizen's personal group. Under the system mandated by this bill, and also because of the new flexibility introduced in Ver 1.12, land will now be recorded as owned either by an individual citizen *or* by a group. This means some changes are necessary in how we administer the land deeding process.
Most citizens bought land in NFS before Ver 1.12, and therefore were required to form a group and purchase the land via that group. An inspection of the land ownership information embedded in the parcel itself (look at "About Land") will show that group as the Owner. And, indirectly, it is that data which is read by our new Land Management System software getting very close to completion.
We will be converting listings of parcels and fees, found on the website, to whatever data is contained in your parcel "owner" field. In addition, as new parcel deeds are made, parcels which are deeded to a group will have that group listed on the deed.
This step will require an additional layer of administration... recording who is associated with which group, and certifying that the group holds sufficient property to support that number of citizens. The Estate Owner (at this time Rudeen) continues to be needed to transfer title, so unless otherwise established, she can perform the deeding and collect the names of the citizens which each group contains, including pointing out when the group has reached the maximum number for the parcel owned. Ideally, she can then convey this information to someone designated by the Chancellor who can maintain the actual citizen rolls.
For privacy reasons it is strongly urged that these group affiliations DO NOT appear on the website. We can certainly list citizens as we do now, and groups as to their ownership of parcels. But citizen/group affiliations should be maintained only in world for community access.
Citizens should keep in mind that if the land fees for their parcels enter into serious arrears, all citizens in the group risk losing their citizenship unless those arrears are corrected.
Anyone who in fact is registered with group ownership who wishes to have their parcel ownership converted to individual ownership, please speak to me. The conversion is easy to do. Rudeen will Reclaim your parcel and set it for sale to you for $0. You'll need to go purchase the land as you would any mainland parcel. However... very important... you still are NOT required to hold a premium SL membership. Land on a private sim such as NFS or CN has nothing at all to do, money-wise, with land on the mainland.
Sudane.....