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'''Real property''' is a type of
property that is opposed to
personal property. Real property is generally a term used in anglo-american
common law jurisdictions as opposed to
immovable property in civil law jurisdictions (''immobilier'' in French, or heritable property in Scotland). Generally speaking most real property consists, at least partially, of
real estate.
Real property is not just the ownership of property and buildings, it includes many legal relationships between owners of real estate that are purely conceptual such as the
easement, where a neighboring property may have some right on your property,
right-of-way, or the right to pass over a property, and incorporeal heridiments such as
profit a prendre. Real property can also be held in various ways. In some jurisdictions it is held absolutely, in other places it may still be considered to be carved out of the
Crown's ownership of all property in the realm. Such distinctions are important in terms of the law of
escheat or when property reverts to the state because it lacks an owner or has been abandoned.
An important area of real property are the definitions of
estates in land. These are various interests that may limit the
ownership rights one has over the land. The most common and perhaps most absolute type of estate is the
fee simple which signifies that the owner has the right to dispose of the property as she sees fit. Other estates include the
life estate where the owner's rights to the property cease at their death and
fee tail estates where the property at the time of death passes to the heirs of the body (i.e. children, grandchildren, descendants) of the owner of the estate before he died.
Estates may also be held jointly as
joint tenants with right of survivorship or as
tenants in common. The difference in these two types of
joint ownership of an estate in land is basically the inheritability of the estate. In joint tenancy (or in marriage this is sometimes called
tenancy of the entirety) the surviving tenant (or tenants) become the sole owner (or owners) of the estate. Nothing passes to the heirs of the deceased tenant. In some jurisdictions the magic words "with right of survivorship" must be used or the tenancy will assumed to be tenants in common. Tenants in common will have a heritable portion of the estate in proportion to their ownership interest which is presumed to be equal amongst tenants unless otherwise stated in the transfer deed. There are other types of estates in land that are used to prevent the alienation of land (also used in the law of
trusts). Generally these are called
future interests, an example being the
rule against perpetuities, see for example
The Rule in Shelley's Case.
Real property may not only be owned it may be leased in which the possession of the property is given to the tenant for a limited period of time. Such leases are also called estates such as an estate for years, a periodic tenancy or an estate at will.
Real property may also be owned jointly through the device of the
condominium or
cooperative.
Because real property is essential for industry or other activity requiring a lot of fixed physical
capital,
economics is very concerned with real property and rules regarding its valuation and disposition, and obligations accrueing to its owners. In economic terms, real property consists of some
natural capital (or
land, one of the
factors of production especially in agriculture), and
infrastructural capital (the buildings, water and power lines, and other improvements necessary to make real property useful for some human purpose). Other fixed physical assets, indistinguishable economically from infrastructure, such as machines, may be stored on real property and may require natural or infrastructural attributes (such as running water for a turbine or an isolated location to allow loud noise emissions) hard to duplicate even nearby.
de:Immobilie
fr:Immobilier
