The Gemara in Bava Batra 53b establishes the foundational principle directly: if a person performed an act of חזקה on one field with the intention of acquiring only the other field, he acquires neither — for one does not acquire an item without the intention to do so; this is the clearest talmudic statement that intent is a constitutive element of קנין חזקה.
Yet the Gemara immediately qualifies this: Bava Batra 53a records that one who takes possession of a field in order to acquire it has indeed acquired it, and Bava Batra 41b notes that Rava distinguished between a purposeful act of possession and a person who merely surveys land without purchasing — showing that the operative question is always whether the act was done with genuine acquisitive intent.
The dispute over whether intent is required even in a transaction context — and not only regarding ownerless property — surfaces sharply in Tur, Choshen Mishpat 192, which cites Rav Hai Gaon's position that in the sale of another's property (as opposed to acquiring ownerless property), intent to acquire is presumed in every case: when the parties are engaged in the transaction in each other's presence it is self-evident that the act is done for the sake of acquisition, and when done in the seller's absence after being told to 'go take possession and acquire,' the buyer is presumed to be acting on the seller's mandate — and the Tur concludes that Rav Hai Gaon's view is the more persuasive one.
The Arukh HaShulchan, Choshen Mishpat 192 elaborates this distinction systematically: in the context of ownerless property (נכסי הפקר), certain acts of חזקה — such as gathering wood from a field — acquire only if the intention was to improve the land rather than merely to take the wood, so that intent determines the very character of the act; but in a sale or gift, acquisition holds in every case, because there is always a demonstrable presumption that the act is done for the sake of the transaction.
The Shulchan Arukh, Choshen Mishpat 192 codifies the operative rule for the sale context without qualification: once the buyer locked, fenced, or breached any part of the property in a way that benefits it, he has acquired — the presumption of acquisitive intent being supplied by the transaction framework itself.
The Pitchei Teshuva, Choshen Mishpat 192 raises a related complication in the responsum of the Maharashdam: where the buyer paid workers to perform the act of חזקה on his behalf, a question arises whether the acquisition is valid, since the workers themselves did not intend to effect a transfer to the buyer — drawing an analogy to the rule (cited from Tur, Choshen Mishpat 275) that if one builds through workers who have no intention of conferring ownership on the employer, the employer does not acquire.
The underlying talmudic source for חזקה as a mode of land acquisition is Kiddushin 26a, where Chizkiyah and the school of Rabbi Yishmael independently derive from pesukim in Yirmiyahu and Devarim that dwelling in and taking physical hold of a place constitutes the operative act of ownership — a derivation presupposing that the physical act must express the acquirer's claim.
The rule that a sale is not concluded by words alone — however clearly stated and witnessed — is established by Mishneh Torah, Sales 1:1, underscoring that a formal act is required; and Mishneh Torah, Sales 1:8 then specifies that for חזקה the act must benefit the property, must be performed in the seller's presence or following the seller's instruction to 'go take possession and acquire,' — conditions that together ensure the act is unmistakably one of acquisition.
