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gbuk2013

Technically, the Crown owns the land. Everyone else owns an estate in this land. This distinction only really becomes important if you do something silly like die intestate (without a will) and without any heirs, in which case title reverts back to the Crown. Or if you find oil, gas or coal under your house in which case you don't get any of it. ;)

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The term for absolute ownership of land is called Allodial title. It exists practically nowhere.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allodial_title

Non mobile link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allodial_title

It still exists in Orkney and Shetland (which until the 15th century were part of Norway rather than Scotland) under the name of Udal tenure.

https://rosdev.atlassian.net/wiki/display/2ARM/Udal+Tenure

It exists everywhere, but usually the State claims it. In Texas an individual may be able to claim it.

"Corporations are people" if the corporation is the State, it seems.

Michael Badnarik gave a good presentation on the subject:

https://archive.org/details/Michael_Badnarik

There's an argument that "real" in "real estate" doesn't mean "tangible", but comes from "royal" or "real" in Spanish, meaning the King ultimately owns all the land.

It would more likely come from French (in which "réal" meant "royal" in the past, see Montréal - Mount Royal) seeing how French influenced English legal terms and such.

It comes from Latin res-rei, meaning "thing" because it's about the property of material stuff, as opposed to inmaterial... you can own a right.

In Spanish there's that "real" too (as in "derechos reales", "real estate taxes"), that makes it third meaning after "real" and "royal".

That's why I said there was an argument, instead of anything definitive. There's a link to a Wikipedia revision discussing this in length on this StackExchange page: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/66379/whats-the-...

This explanation makes more sense to me intuitively, as there is a lot of material stuff that is not "real estate", in fact majority of stuff that is material is not real estate.

This is one of the times I can say for sure that I know what I'm saying. A mix of improbable circumstances.

The funny thing about the link you share is that the two comments that offer the real answer are the least voted.

They explain why actions were called in rem (a demand related to possesions as opposed to in personam) and that real estate is refered to goods that you can't move, as opposed to furniture. Actually in Spanish real estate is "inmueble" while furniture is "mueble".

Thanks, this was useful.

I think Hong Kong is also owned by the state...you can lease it for as long as 999 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_rent_in_Hong_Kong but you do not own it. But in reality you own it and 999 years later you're related to half of the world (give or take :))

Let's not forget that for land in many countries, if a squatter uses your lad for xx years without being challenged, it is theirs. So it's recognized as different.

So individuals can't own mineral rights in the UK?

They can, just not for some things:

"With the exception of oil, gas, coal, gold and silver, the state does not own mineral rights in the UK. Generally minerals are held in private ownership, and information on mineral rights, where available, is held by the Land Registry together with details of land surface ownership."

https://www.bgs.ac.uk/mineralsuk/planning/legislation/minera...

Nor in Sweden. Instead the Crown usually leases the rights to companies for a song and a dance.

So is the US unusual in that regard?

Comparing to whole Europe, yes.

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