REAL ESTATE & PROPERTY BUYING GUIDES

► USA

► CANADA

► ENGLAND

► ITALY

► SPAIN

► DUBAI

► BULGARIA

► ASIA

► TURKEY

► CYPRUS

► PORTUGAL

► GREECE

► FRANCE

► RUSSIA

► MALTA

► Real Estate or immovable property is a legal term that encompasses land along with anything permanently affixed to the land, such as buildings. Real Estate (immovable property) is often considered synonymous with real property (also sometimes called realty), in contrast with personal property (also sometimes called chattel or personalty).

However, for technical purposes, some people prefer to distinguish real estate, referring to the land and fixtures themselves, from real property, referring to ownership rights over real estate.

► The terms real estate and real property are used primarily in common law, while civil law jurisdictions refer instead to immovable property.

In law, the word real means relating to a thing (from Latin res/rei, thing), as distinguished from a person. Thus the law broadly distinguishes between "real" property (land and anything affixed to it) and "personal" property (everything else, e.g., clothing, furniture, money). The conceptual difference was between immovable property, which would transfer title along with the land, and movable property, which a person would retain title to. (The word is not derived from the notion of land having historically been "royal" property. The word royal — and its Castilian cognate real — come from the related Latin word rex-regis, meaning king.)

► British, French and Italian usages of the term

In British usage ... “real property” is often shortened to just “property” relating to land and fixtures as such while the term “real estate” is used mostly in the context of probate law, and means all interests in land held by a deceased person at death excluding interests in money arising under a trust for sale of or charged on land.

In French, Italian and Spanish, real estate is called "immovables" (immobilier in French, immobili in Italian and inmueble in Spanish); other property is called "movables" (mobilier and mueble).