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IMHO, Gertos did so very opportunistically; clearly he wasn’t in need of a house. I assume he didn’t notify the then actual owners lest they kick him and his tenants out. But again, if they didn’t check on it in 12 years, or they just let him keep on doing it hoping to get a fixed-up property, then my sympathy for them is pretty limited.
Maybe. Maybe they were just too lazy or inept to properly manage their inheritance. For all we know, they could be renting apartments themselves or they could be Australian Rockefellers, or anything in between.
They are? I admire his industriousness, and legally he’s in the right, but he sounds a little sleazy.
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After the water thread I decided to drink a bit while moving on to the next thread and now everyone in my office is looking at the guy who spat a mouthful of water onto his laptop.
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Yikes! Don’t visit the MacBook threads next or you’re in for some bad news. 
Boing Boing: pace yourself.
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in texas, where i live, if someone pays the property taxes in full each year for 7 consecutive years you can claim the title and deed to the property, even if the original owner is living on the property.
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Unfortunately, there are lots of methods used to take homes using information available in public records:
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I think I’m most surprised that Australia has such fine examples of Prairie architecture.
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a very similar thing happened last year or so here in Reno. a couple (who happened to be realtors, so they had access to the tools for research, and the knowledge of the law) found a home in a quite desirable section of town that the owner had left town during the recession, apparently abandoning the place. they started taking care of it, paid taxes, all the while making an effort to find the owner. turns out the owner was living in europe, was very old, and not exactly in place physically or mentally to come back and claim the place. there were no heirs to speak of. the owner’s lawyers basically said, “yeah, whatever, not much we can do from here,” and so the realtor couple got a very nice home in a tony section of town for basically yardwork and several years worth of taxes due to squatter’s rights.
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“ant infestation”?!
No thank you!! Walks away…
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I taught an evening class in property law (not at a law school and not to law students, to be clear). Most of the time it was hard to get people to look up from their phones. But holy heck, nothing got a good debate started like adverse possession. People tended to have REALLY strong feelings one way or the other, with not a lot of middle ground.
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This happened to a unit in my building.
I am fuzzy on how it works. The new owner is not the owner yet, but is collecting rent? Just for the cost of back taxes. Seems risky.
FTFY, a la Ant Man.
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Just saying the Renters should be granted ownership not the accountant!!
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oooh aargh property is just a phone call away… 
That’s heartbreaking. 
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Look at this evil capitalist, taking over a property that no one wants/claims and paying for the upkeep, renovations and taxes. Oh, wait, he reused, reduced, recycled. Good for him for making a few bucks.
Compare this against people in my town that inherit old big homes, live off the rental income as slum-lords, do nothing to up-keep the property (even simple “free” things like mowing the lawn), then sue the city because they don’t want to pay the taxes or the fines of a dilapidated home.
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In the states, there was a rash of sovereign citizen types taking over homes, sometimes with the owners only out of town for a short while.
They used the usual bollocks slurry of obscure laws and handfuls of garbage documents to confuse the issue and law enforcement. i.e. break into the house, fix the damage they caused, then file a workman’s lien with the county for the “repair”, use the county document to fast-talk a lock change, file junk “adverse possession” on the property, quit-claims, etc. The main problem is that as soon as they have (bogus) paperwork against the property, eviction is a civil matter rather than criminal B&E and trespass, which is a major nightmare for the real property owners.
That’s probably been tightened-up as police and courts became familiar with it. (The only people making money and staying out of jail were the people selling courses on this nonsense.) In Michigan, squatting was made a criminal offence rather than civil, but that’s special case, where it’s the city of Detroit and the county that are stealing people’s homes.
A lot of them aren’t people who just want a home. A lot of these are predatory scammers who turn around and rent or try to sell the properties to other people.
It’s a whole rabbit hole on YouTube.
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I’ve paid the property taxes on land held in a family trust. Granted, my last name matches the name associated with the property, but the first name doesn’t. Besides I paid via an online form, that didn’t include any blanks to specify one’s connection to the property. I don’t think they care.
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