Estates and future interests, concurrent ownership, leases, servitudes, and recording acts.
Overview
Property is the most notation-heavy 1L subject. A conveyance must be parsed precisely, the state of title tracked through each transfer, and the resulting interests named with the correct vocabulary before any policy or fairness discussion earns credit.
Beyond estates, the course covers the law governing shared and sequential use: co-tenancy, leases, easements and covenants, nuisance, and the recording system that resolves competing claims to the same parcel.
Exams typically split into a conveyancing question that must be answered mechanically and a use-or-priority question that rewards argument. Students who can do both reliably tend to outperform, because most of the class is strong at only one.
Topics
These are the Property doctrines available in the Exam Builder. Pick one to generate a hypo focused on it, or combine several.
Fee simple absolute and defeasible fees, life estates, waste, and the language that creates each.
Practice Present EstatesReversions, remainders vested and contingent, executory interests, and the Rule Against Perpetuities.
Practice Future InterestsTenancy in common, joint tenancy and severance, tenancy by the entirety, ouster, contribution, and partition.
Practice Concurrent OwnershipLease types, the implied warranty of habitability, constructive eviction, assignment versus sublease, and holdovers.
Practice Landlord & TenantCreation by grant, implication, necessity, and prescription; scope and termination; real covenants and equitable servitudes.
Practice Easements & CovenantsActual, open and notorious, hostile, exclusive, and continuous possession, tacking, and disabilities.
Practice Adverse PossessionRace, notice, and race-notice statutes, bona fide purchaser status, shelter rule, and wild deeds.
Practice Recording ActsRegulatory takings, the Penn Central factors, physical invasion, exactions, and public use.
Practice TakingsGrading reality
Issue spotting is the entry fee. Points separate on rule precision, factual application, competing arguments, and the way the answer is organised.
Naming the interests created by a conveyance, in order, at each moment in time. This is graded almost like a math problem and offers little partial credit for approximation.
Once interests are named, the exam moves the parcel through sales, mortgages, and deaths. Professors test whether your state of title is consistent at each step.
Identify the statute type from its language, then run each claimant through notice and value requirements rather than assuming who wins.
Easement scope, nuisance, habitability, and adverse possession all turn on detailed facts and competing reasonableness arguments.
Issue library
The fact patterns below recur across Property finals. Each one names the doctrine, the trigger, and the analysis a grader expects.
Durational language creates a fee simple determinable with an automatic possibility of reverter; conditional language creates a right of entry that must be exercised. Precatory language may create no future interest at all.
Identify the measuring life, ask whether the interest must vest or fail within twenty-one years after that life, and note any state reform statute before striking the interest.
A unilateral conveyance, a mortgage in a title-theory state, and a lease may or may not sever. Argue both ways and then distribute at death accordingly.
Privity of estate and privity of contract determine who the landlord may sue. Whether the transfer conveyed the entire remaining term is the controlling fact.
Classify the statute, determine actual, inquiry, and record notice for each buyer, then apply the shelter rule where a protected purchaser conveys onward.
Professors rarely test a doctrine alone. These pairings show up repeatedly.
Diagnostics
Each of these is fixable, and each is visible in a graded practice answer long before it shows up on a transcript.
'A remainder' instead of 'a contingent remainder in fee simple absolute' reads as uncertainty and is scored as a rule error.
Practice this under timeAnswers that classify the original grant and then jump to the final dispute lose the middle-step points entirely.
Practice this under timeThe statute's exact words determine whether a later purchaser must record first. Quote or paraphrase the operative language before applying it.
Practice this under timeHostility and open-and-notorious use are argued, not asserted, and professors build ambiguous facts into both.
Practice this under timeThe loop
Exam Sim generates a fresh Property hypo from your criteria, times your attempt, grades it against a hidden rubric, redlines your own sentences, and points you at the next session.
EXAMPLE SCENARIO
A grant to a child for life, then to grandchildren who reach twenty-five, followed by a sale and a death. Tests classification, perpetuities, waste, and the resulting state of title.
EXAMPLE SCENARIO
A subdivided parcel with decades of informal use, then a new owner who fences it. Tests easement by implication and prescription, scope, and adverse possession.
EXAMPLE SCENARIO
A seller conveys to one buyer who does not record, then to another who searched but missed an earlier reference. Tests recording act classification, inquiry notice, and the shelter rule.
FAQ
Generate a fresh Property exam, write it under realistic conditions, and see exactly where your analysis earns or loses points.
Start Property Practice