It doesn't have to be a rich relative, in some places just simply any house that is livable and has no mortgages or stuff like that is something representing half a million dollars of value if not more.Honestly, a working/middle-class family inheriting a rich uncle's house four states over rarely happens, and when it does, FAMILY tends to cause more issues than squatters do, when random family members come out of the woodwork and threaten to take the inheritor to court. Not to mention bamb suddenly hit with new property taxes, renting selling or even maintaing the property becomes next to impossible because you live four states over and can't affored to hire anyone to bassivally own it on your behalf.
Lordship isn't the moneymaker people think it is unless it's already your bread and butter which is why most landlords tend to be rich real-estate people. Squatters rights can be a problem especially for buyers but there is a myriad of bigger problems with how property works in the US.
Hence all the horror stories about squatters usually have that in the background.
Squatters doing their shit isn't the only problem, but they don't solve any, this is just an encouragement for the shady people to try fuck with the middle class, and with government going out of its way to side with the former in case of lefty cities.
In libertarian circles ironically that's also brought up as an issue, if you have to keep paying for owning the land, do you really own it?Personally, I'm more concerned about taxes than I am with squatters right now. But then again I'm not part of the landowning class. i've only got one home and I don't leave it for a significant length of time. (A week at most) mortgages are killing my family more than squatters.
It's not a bad argument...
But as long as it's not applied, property taxes kill the squatter argument that property ownership shouldn't be "for nothing and in perpetuity", because it clearly isn't, try not paying land taxes and see how long you will keep it.
The squatter thing is just simply anther burden to be felt by small landowners, as in addition to financial and bureaucratic obligations set by the government (which at least have set amounts, schedules, and usually at least should be doable by correspondence) it effectively puts a need to provide at least minimal, occasional on-site physical guard on the property on top of that, and in case of more squatter friendly areas that's not going to be enough to get rid of the squatters, just enough to notice them before their theft of property gets rubberstamped by the law and you will need a pricey civil court case to actually get rid of them, forget about getting paid for any damages they do to the property too.