Personal Property vs. Real Property.

Personal property is everything that is not real property.

The opposite of real property is personal property.

Personal property is anything you can move around, i.e. book shelves and cars.

Personal property can also be referred to as chattels. To transfer chattels, a bill of sale is used. The Uniform Commercial Code handles the transfer and use of personal property as reassurance for debts.

Personal property consists of anything mobile, money, evidences of debt, and "choses in action" (legal term to describe the judicial proceedings to recover money or other personal property). Such as, anything under a contract, like money that is owed, can be collected.

Although personal property and real property are opposites, they can become one another.

• Fixture: something that was once personal property, after installment, it becomes real property.
• When a personal property becomes part of the land, affixed, personal property becomes real property i.e. a fence.
• This is also known as an appurtenance.

Since a fixture becomes real property, it is part of the real estate, which means it will stay with the house even when it is sold.

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Terms:

Chattel: Evolved from the word cattle, one of man's earliest important possessions. A.k.a. personal property.

Bill of sale: Document (such as an invoice) by which ownership (title) of goods or property is transferred. If the transfer is contingent on a happening (as in a mortgage bill of sale) it is called a conditional bill of sale.

Chose of action: Right enforceable by legal action, such as the right to recover a debt.

Fixture: Something that was once personal property, after installment, it becomes real property.