National portion

Property Characteristics vocabulary

10 terms, defined plainly. Where a term is commonly confused with another, the definition says so — that confusion is usually the wrong answer.

Fixture

Personal property that has been attached to real property so it becomes part of it (e.g. a built-in oven). A free-standing appliance stays personal property.

Trade fixture

A business tenant's equipment installed for trade purposes — remains the tenant's personal property and is removable before the lease ends.

Emblements

Annually cultivated crops (fructus industriales) — treated as the tenant's/cultivator's personal property. Trees and perennials are part of the land.

Physical characteristics of land

Immobility, indestructibility, and uniqueness (non-homogeneity). Distinct from ECONOMIC characteristics: scarcity, improvements, permanence of investment, and area preference (situs).

Police power

Government's power to regulate for health, safety, and welfare (zoning, building codes) — requires NO compensation, unlike eminent domain.

Eminent domain

Government's power to take private property for public use WITH just compensation, through condemnation.

Escheat

Property passes to the state when an owner dies with no will AND no heirs. It is NOT what happens for unpaid taxes — that is tax foreclosure.

Easement appurtenant

An easement benefiting an adjacent parcel (dominant estate over servient estate); it runs with the land. An easement in gross benefits a person/company (e.g. utility lines).

Encroachment

A physical intrusion of an improvement onto a neighbor's land (fence, driveway, overhang) — typically revealed by a survey.

Metes and bounds

A legal description that traces the boundary by courses and distances from a point of beginning back to that same point.