Freehold/ Leasehold Estates.

When something is a freehold estate, it means that 'I own the property'. You are the owner of the land and there is no time deadline. The property could last a lifetime, because the land could be willed to a person's heir.

Types of Freehold:

• Fee Simple
• Fee Defeasible
• Life Estate
• Fee Tail

When something is a leasehold estate, it means that 'I rent the property'. This is also known as leasing. There usually is a time deadline to the property. Can be known as 'less than freehold estates'.

Types of Leasehold:

• Estate for years
• Estate for period
• Estate at will
• Estate at sufferance

In an apartment complex, a landlord owns the property in freehold, but rents it to the tenant in leasehold.

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.

What is land?

Land consists of more than just the surface of the earth. When you acquire land, you own from the middle of the earth and outward around it, infinitely. There can be three separate owners of a piece of land. Each owner is allowed to own the subsurface (mineral) rights, surface rights, and/or air rights. Although we may own the rights to our land/property, the government has their own certain rights to our property as well. For instance, one right is allowing an airplane fly over your land without your permission. More about other government rights later.

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Real Estate includes:

1. Land plus appurtenances, such as the rights, privileges, and improvements that belong to, and pass with, the transfer of property;
2. Man-made appurtenances, such as houses, fences, barns, and swimming pools – in other words, items that have been "added" to the real estate;
3. Natural appurtenances are things like trees, creeks, and streams;
4. Air rights, gas rights, solar rights, light and sound rights, mineral rights, and surface rights. Air, surface and subsurface rights can each be sold or not sold separately ("I will sell you the 'mineral rights' to my land."); and
5. Water rights, such as littoral and riparian rights, and prior appropriation. 

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Terms:
Appurtenance: Anything attached to a piece of land or building such that it becomes a part of that property, and is passed on to a new owner when the property is sold. It may be something tangible like a garage, septic system, water tank, or something abstract such as an easement or right of way.

Getting started.

As I mentioned in my other blog, www.b0bbyh0.blogspot.com, I will be starting on writing about Real Estate here. My license exam will be coming up in March, so not only is this review and help me gather my thoughts, but you too can learn a little something about Real Estate as well. Feel free to leave questions or comments and I'll do my best to get your questions answered. Thank you.

Bobby Ho