AI2508 Compulsory Purchase and Compensation

Eligibility to the master programme in Real Estate and Construction Management.

The course deals with legal frameworks that give public institutions, and sometimes also private people, the right to acquire land through compulsory purchase in different situations. The following main aspects will be dealt with in the course.

• Fundamental motives to permit compulsory purchase. Different situations where compulsory purchase can be realised. Effects if compulsory purchase should not be possible. Compensation rules from economic and legal points of view. Value concepts and their relevance in cases of compensation. Benefit apportionment versus compensation for damage.

• Principles for the permission process; judicial or administrative handling of the permission process, material conditions for compulsory purchase, taking possession. Applicable legislation in different situations. Permission process in different systems of regulation.

• Compensation rules in the Expropriation Act, Planning and Building Act, cadastral legislation, environmental and nature conservation legislation. Analysis of legal cases, practice, negotiation solutions and voluntary standards.

• Valuation problems in different compensation situations. Methods for estimation of compensation for encroachment and compulsory purchase.

When the land use is changed - through the creation of new settlement and expansion of roads, railways, power lines etc - the original real estate and owner structure must be adapted to new conditions. To ensure that important projects within the built environment should be possible to be carried out, there is legislation about compulsory acquisition/expropriation that contains rules about partly  permission to compulsory purchase (land acquisition), partly which compensation  the one that must give up land has the right to. The overall aim of the course is to give deeper understanding of rules for the permission process as well as which compensation that should be paid when compulsory purchase or other limitation of dispositions of land and real property is realised. At the end of the course the students are expected to be able to:

• explain and expound why compulsory purchase can be legitimised

• describe the contents of and in what situations different types of law shall be used

• explain different value concepts for real property and the relation between them

• describe and compare the legislation's different compensation principles

• apply different compensation rules and principles and explain the compensation in practical cases