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Concept
Real property
Summary
In English common law, real property, real estate, immovable property or, solely in the US and Canada, realty, is land which is the property of some person and all structures (also called improvements or fixtures) integrated with or affixed to the land, including crops, buildings, machinery, wells, dams, ponds, mines, canals, roads, and other things. The term is historic, arising from the now-discontinued form of action, which distinguished between real property disputes and personal property disputes. Personal property, or personalty, was, and continues to be, all property that is not real property.
In countries with personal ownership of real property, civil law protects the status of real property in real-estate markets, where estate agents work in the market of buying and selling real estate. Scottish civil law calls real property heritable property, and in French-based law, it is called immobilier ("immovable property").
The word "real" derives from Latin res ("thing"). Under European civil law, a lawsuit that seeks official recognition of a property right is known as an actio in rem (action in relation to a thing). This contrasts with an actio in personam in which the plaintiff seeks relief for the actions of a particular person. The distinction can be subtle; the medieval action of novel disseisin, although aimed at repossessing land, was not an actio in rem because it was brought against the alleged dispossessor.
Henry de Bracton's Treatise on the Laws and Customs of England is credited with giving "real property" its particular meaning in English law. After discussing the distinction in civil law, Bracton proposed that actions for movable property were inherently actions for relief, and that therefore an actio in rem could be brought only upon immovable property. This view is not accepted in continental civil law, but can be understood in the context of legal developments during Bracton's lifetime.
In thirteenth-century England the courts of canon law claimed broad authority to interpret wills, but inheritance of land remained a matter for the royal courts.
Official source
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