Or, why you need the
Encyclopedia of Real Estate Terms
(Terms in bold are defined and explained in
detail in the Encyclopedia.)
To answer all these questions could take
hours, but the answers and many, many more can be found in
the Encyclopedia
of Real Estate Terms (Third Edition (hardcover, 1,536 pages) (purchase at www.deltaalpha.com) or Online (subscribe
at www.realestatedefined.com).
Alternatively, these reference sources will indicate where to go for further research.
A few quotations that appear in the Encyclopedia of Real Estate Terms.
“Property is nothing but a basis of expectation; the expectation of
deriving certain advantages from a thing which we are said to possess,
inconsequence of the relation which we stand towards it. … Property and law are
born together, and die together. Before laws were made there was no property;
take away laws, and property ceases”, Jeremy Bentham, 1 Theory of Legislation 137, 139 (
“A man shall not be allowed to blow hot and cold – to affirm at one time and deny at another – making a claim on those whom he has deluded to their disadvantage, and founding that claim on the very matters of the delusion. Such a principle has its basis in common sense and common justice, and whether it is called ‘estoppel’, or by any other name, it is one which the Courts of law have in modern times most usefully adopted”, Cave v Mills (1862) 7 Hurl & N 913, 927–8, 158 Eng Rep 740.
“It is not for its own sake that
men desire money, but for the sake
of what they can purchase with it”, Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776), Book
“Why should anyone outside a lunatic
asylum wish to use money as a store
of wealth? Because … our desire to hold money as a store of wealth is a
barometer of the degree of our distrust of our own calculations and conventions
concerning the future … The possession of actual money lulls our disquietude”, J.M.
Keynes, The General Theory of Employment (1937),
Quart. J. Econ. p. 216
“Our law holds the property of
every man so sacred, that no man can set his foot upon his neighbour’s
close without leave; if he does he is a trespasser,
though he does no damage at all; if he will tread upon his neighbour’s
ground, he must justify it by law”, Entick v Carrington (1765) 2 Wils KB 275, 291, 95 Eng Rep 807, 817
“the
fundamental feature of a trust is
that it separates the functions of administration and enjoyment which were so
inseparably combined in the Roman law concept of dominium.
Although the trustee is invested with the legal title (which, by definition
carries the administrative powers of management and disposition) his ownership
is nominal and purely formal. The legal title is a ‘paper title’; the trustee,
a mere ‘paper owner’. The substance of beneficial enjoyment is reserved at all
times for the beneficiary … The legal title is a matter of form; the rights of the beneficiaries represent the substance”, K.J. Gray and P.D. Symes, Real Property
and Real People (1981), p. 22
Terms in bold are
defined and explained in detail in the Encyclopedia.