2.1 Estates and Property Rights

Real Property vs. Personal Property

Real property is land, everything permanently attached to it (buildings, trees, fences), and the bundle of legal rights that comes with ownership. Personal property — also called chattel or personalty — is everything that is movable and not permanently affixed: furniture, vehicles, appliances that simply plug in.

The distinction matters on the exam because items can change category. A tree growing in the ground is real property; once cut into lumber it becomes personal property (this is called severance). Conversely, when personal property is permanently attached to land it becomes a fixture and converts to real property — this is annexation.

The Total Concept of Land

• Surface rights — the land itself.
• Subsurface (mineral) rights — what lies below, including oil, gas, and minerals.
• Air rights — the space above, limited by reasonable aircraft navigation.
• Water rights — riparian (rivers/streams) and littoral (lakes/oceans), important in Florida's coastal market.

Fixtures and the Bundle of Rights

To decide whether an item is a fixture (real property) or personal property, courts apply the IRMA test:

Trade fixtures installed by a commercial tenant remain the tenant's personal property and may be removed before the lease ends; anything left behind becomes the landlord's by accession.

The bundle of rights describes ownership as a collection of separable rights:

• Possession — the right to occupy.
• Control — the right to use within the law.
• Enjoyment — use free from interference.
• Exclusion — the right to keep others out.
• Disposition — the right to sell, lease, gift, or will the property.

Because each stick can be transferred independently, an owner can sell mineral rights while keeping surface rights, or lease possession while retaining ownership. A common exam trap: a tenant's trade fixture is treated differently from an ordinary fixture precisely because intention and the landlord-tenant relationship point toward removal, not permanence.

Severance vs. Annexation

Keep the two conversion processes straight, because the exam tests them in scenarios:

• Severance turns real property into personal property — harvesting crops, mining ore, cutting timber.
• Annexation turns personal property into real property — installing a built-in dishwasher, pouring a concrete patio, hard-wiring a ceiling fan.

Growing crops raise a special rule: emblements (annually cultivated crops like corn) are treated as the tenant's personal property even after a lease ends.

Freehold vs. Leasehold Estates

An estate is the degree, quantity, and extent of a person's interest in real property. Estates divide into two families:

Freehold estates last for an indefinite or indeterminate time and include ownership:

• Fee simple absolute — the highest, most complete form of ownership; unlimited duration, inheritable, limited only by government powers (taxation, eminent domain, police power, escheat).
• Fee simple defeasible — ownership subject to a condition; title can be lost if the condition is violated, reverting to the grantor or a third party.
• Life estate — ownership measured by someone's lifetime. The life tenant may use the property but cannot commit waste. When the measuring life ends, title passes to a remainderman (named third party) or reverts to the grantor (a reversion).

Leasehold estates (non-freehold) give possession for a fixed or determinable time without ownership:

• Estate for years — a fixed beginning and ending date; no notice needed to terminate.
• Periodic tenancy — automatically renews (month-to-month) until proper notice is given.
• Tenancy at will — continues indefinitely with the consent of both parties.
• Tenancy at sufferance — a holdover tenant who stays without permission after the lease ends.

The defining contrast for the exam: freehold estates are about ownership of indefinite duration, while leasehold estates are about possession for a determinable term. A life estate is freehold even though it ends, because its duration is uncertain (a lifetime), whereas an estate for years is leasehold even if it runs 99 years, because its end date is fixed.

Forms of Co-Ownership in Florida

When two or more people hold title together, Florida recognizes three concurrent estates:

• Tenancy in common — the default. Owners hold undivided fractional interests that may be unequal; no right of survivorship, so an owner's share passes to their heirs.
• Joint tenancy — equal undivided interests with right of survivorship; the deceased owner's share passes automatically to the surviving joint tenants. Requires the four unities of time, title, interest, and possession.
• Tenancy by the entirety — available only to married couples in Florida. It carries survivorship and adds strong protection: a creditor of just one spouse generally cannot reach the property, and neither spouse can convey alone.

Florida homestead note: Florida's constitutional homestead protection shields the primary residence from most creditors (with no equity cap on value) and imposes restrictions on devising homestead when a spouse or minor child survives.

Special Ownership Structures

• Condominium — owner holds fee-simple title to the individual unit plus an undivided interest in common elements; transferred by deed.
• Cooperative — owner holds stock in the corporation that owns the building, plus a proprietary lease to occupy a unit; this is personal property, not real property.
• Timeshare — a right to use a property for a recurring interval; a deeded timeshare is real property, while a right-to-use timeshare is a contractual (personal property) interest.