Structure Selects Reality

Two buyers can look at the same empty plot and see completely different things, and the title deed decides which of them is right. Structure does more than organise land. It selects what the land can become.

Say a stand on the edge of town looks perfect for a few rental cottages. The buyer pictures a shared driveway and tenants paying monthly. Then the conveyancer reads out the conditions in the title deed, and one of them limits the stand to a single dwelling. In one line the plot changes from an investment into a family home with a large garden. Removing a condition like that is sometimes possible, but it takes an application, it takes time and nothing guarantees the outcome.

Servitudes work the same way. A right of way for a neighbour, or a municipal pipeline running along the back boundary, fixes where a building can never go. Nobody sees these on a site visit, because grass grows over a servitude just like it grows anywhere else.

The municipal zoning sits on top of all this, deciding how much of the stand can be built on and what it may be used for. A buyer who reads the structure before falling for the view knows what is actually for sale.