Hawaii Land Reform Act
The land comprising the Hawaiian Islands was originally controlled by the Hawaiian monarchy and over the years wound up being divided up between five (5) major estates, or families, the State of Hawaii and the Federal Government.
The point of this discussion post is to share this story as a perspective behind leased fee and leasehold interests for much of the residential homes in Hawaii and the U.S. Supreme Court ruling using two of the four public limitations on title (police power, eminent domain, taxation, and escheat or abandoned property laws) to allow property owners to acquire the leased fee (landlord) interest in the land under their homes from the five estates.
See the link below and be prepared to discuss during our class during week 2. Was involved as an expert witness in 1981 in helping the Hawaiian courts to establish an equitable way to value the leased fee interests in the underlying lots for the purpose of facilitating the sale between the landlord (estates) and leaseholders who owned their homes, but only leased their lots.
Details of the court rulings and history of this phenomenon are presented in the following link as the history are fascinating and didn’t happen that long ago which we will discuss further.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/467/229 (Links to an external site.)
Questions:
1) How would you value a leased fee interest in someone’s lot under their home?
2) Does this ruling basically forcing the estates to sell their leased fee interests to the homeowners seem fair and why?