The Fee Simple is the largest real estate property in Jamaica known to law; it is the largest because it is likely to last the longest and because it gives its owner the widest powers of enjoyment of the land. If we therefore take the powers of the fee simple owner as a baseline, we can see how far the powers of the owners of other freehold property and interests fall short.

What faculties of enjoyment does the full owner have? Generally speaking, your powers can be considered to be of two types: your rights to enjoy the land as you please, and your rights to alienate, or to pass the land or houses for sale in Mandeville Jamaica to others, as you wish. In theory, the full owner enjoys both of these powers without limitation, but in practice there are limitations on both.

Rights to enjoy Jamaican property and land

The rights that a freeholder has to enjoy the land of Jamaica can be considered under two heads: what he is entitled to enjoy and how he is entitled to enjoy it.

(a) Matter of enjoyment – In theory, the owner of the simple property on the land enjoys everything on the land, below and above it. The Latin maxim – “oujus est solum ejus usque ad caelum et ad inferos”, that is, whoever owns the earth also owns everything up to heaven and even hell. Therefore, the owner is generally entitled to everything on or under his land that does not have another owner “hidden treasure”, however, it belongs to the Crown as does gold and silver ores wherever they are found. find. The Jamaican landowner is also entitled to the use of the airspace over his land, although the airspace does not belong to him since the air is incapable of possessing it. There are also certain things that, although they are on the ground, do not belong to the owner; such things fall into the category of res nullius, or “things that don’t belong to anyone,” and include air.

(b) Method of enjoyment – Although a fee simple owner can do almost anything he wants with his land, he must always show consideration for the rights of others. At common law, a full owner can do whatever he pleases on his land as long as it does not interfere with any legal rights enjoyed by someone else. This rule is embodied in the maxim sic utere tuo ut elienum non laedas (so use your Jamaican property so as not to harm others’). If, for example, a landowner deposits material on his land that gives off an offensive odor to his neighbors, he may be interfering with his neighbor’s right to ordinary enjoyment of his land: if so, then he has committed a “nuisance”. and can be suppressed by court order.

In addition to this restriction of the owner’s absolute powers of enjoyment, his powers may be restricted by virtue of inheritances or interests that have been granted by him or his predecessors in the title, or by contracts of one kind or another, such as licenses or restrictive covenants. .

Apart from the restrictions imposed by the two aforementioned rules, the landlord may, by common law, do as he pleases. However, various statutes, particularly in recent times, have very severely restricted the enjoyment powers of the owner.

Natural rights of a full owner

There are certain rights that belong to the property owner simply because he owns the land: these are sometimes called “natural rights” to distinguish them from a large number of quite similar rights, such as easements, that the property owner can acquire. the earth. besides the natural rights of him. The most important natural rights are:

(a) Air: The right to receive any current of air on the premises in an uncontaminated state. A landowner has no right to airflow onto his land and any neighbor who prevents airflow, say, to remove smoke from a chimney, is not interfering with any rights of the landowner. But if the air flows, the owner has the right not to be contaminated. Prior to this existed with regard to houses for sale in Montego Bay Jamaica, the construction polluted the air with dust and caused various problems for the neighboring residents.

(b) Water:

(i) the exclusive right to fish in the water on his land

(ii) the right to receive the defendant’s water flow in any natural stream on his land and to receive it unpolluted.

(iii) the right to use a reasonable amount of the flow of water in any natural watercourse on their land subject to the right of downstream property owners to receive the charged flow.

(c) Support: The right to have your land, in its natural state, supported by your neighbor’s land; this natural right does not extend to buildings built on the land. If A’s neighbor, B, digs a hole in his own land that causes A’s land to collapse into the hole, this is an interference with A’s natural right of support.

These natural rights are part of the set of rights that make up freehold domains. They are not rights that must be acquired from other Jamaican real property owners like easements and other incorporeal inheritances.