By Honest Alf – the Little Guy Lawyer
So I was told I had to write a blog about the law of real estate – land law, if you like – so I thought to myself: “I wonder if anyone knows (or even cares) about where the term “real estate” came from. Take the word “real”; if something, like land, is “real”, then is everything else “unreal”?
No, that couldn’t be – except maybe in the virtual world of computers, a discussion I won’t go near – so maybe there’s a better approach. Bearing in mind that a lot of the English language is derived from Latin, I found that the Latin word “res”, means a “thing or matter” as distinguished from a “person”, and, over the centuries, the term “real” was used in Middle English to mean “relating to things especially real property”.
Okay, so it comes from Latin – by the way, in Latin the word “res” is feminine, so if a man falls in love with his land, maybe we know why!
So the law broadly distinguishes between “real” property (land and anything attached to it) and “personal” property or chattels – in other words, anything else e.g. clothing, money, you name it.
And what, pray tell, is an “estate”? Well, it’s an interest or right in that land. For example, you could have only the right to occupy the land (then you are a “tenant”) or you could have the right to occupy and sell it (then we call you the “owner”).
“Real Estate” and “Real Property” now mean pretty much the same thing – it’s the bundle of rights that you have in a parcel of land. What’s that you say? Don’t I own the land? Ah, that’s for the next chapter. Stay tuned.