Property: What is a bundle of sticks? Forum

[joetheplumber]

What is the concept of this bundle of sticks/bundle of rights.

[stillwater]

What is the concept of this bundle of sticks/bundle of rights.

That Benthamite school o' thought. Property isn't a unitary thing. You can sell some rights in the bundle but not others, etc.

[waxecstatic]

I think they use the expression a lot in the E&E when discussing easements so here's a stab: owner of a servient estate gives up some right to monopolize his land because he cannot interfere with the dominant estate holder's right to use his land. Dominant estate holder gains a right, or adds a stick in the bundle by gaining permission to use another's land. It's not that complicated really.

[ryoung81]

Here's an example: You own a piece of property... subsequently you own the surface to the property (stick #1), you own the minerals (stick #2), you own the executive rights to the minerals (stick #3), you own the water rights (stick #4), maybe you own the "air rights" depending on where you are and if they believe in such things (stick #5).

Any of these sticks can be severed from the bundle of sticks and sold individually. All the rights associated with a property are called the 'bundle of sticks'.

Hope this helps, I am not in law school yet but this is the kind of work I do in real life.

[sambeber]

Also less concrete than above. A full bundle of sticks/rights, for instance, includes a right to exclude, a right to include, a right to alienate, etc. Each of these rights are what make up the bundle of "property rights."

[joetheplumber]

thanks, those examples helped

[northwood]

real property is like a bundle of sticks. That means you can sell some rights to the property ( either on the property, uses of the property or minerals below ground) while still being the "owner of the property". Or you can think of it as a keg of beer. In the beginning you own all of the beer. As you give some out, you give up the right to enjoy the beer as you please. ( like say, you want to have beer-I-o's for breakfast for the next month, or wash your clothes in a tub of beer). But until all of the beer and keg is gone, you are the owner of the keg.

[Volake]

Typically, when laypeople think of property, they think of things. They think about a car, a video game console, a suit, etc. To a lawyer, property is not these tangible things, but rather the relationship between an individual and those things: a set of rights, which are conceptually and actually separable. When people talk about property rights as a bundle of sticks, they are referring to a different bunch of rights regarding the thing in question.

As people have mentioned, this set of rights with regard to a thing can include the right possess, exclude others from use, destroy and many other rights. The rights (the sticks in a particular bundle) that the law will recognize will sometimes be limited if some sorts of rights with regard to a kind of property might be result in a socially undesirable outcome.

[BigRob]

A [homophobic language redacted].

[e] Hm. Interesting censor system! You might imagine the word I used, though.