Welcome back to module two of the Real Estate License Exam Prep course. Today we are covering real property and land description — the legal backbone of every real estate transaction. This is where the exam tests your understanding of what land actually is, how ownership works, and the three ways a parcel gets legally described.

Let us start with the single most important distinction on the exam: real property versus personal property. Real property is land and everything attached to it, including improvements and the bundle of rights attached to ownership. Personal property, also called chattel, is moveable items that are not attached to the land. Here is the classic exam question: a house is real property, but a refrigerator sitting on the kitchen floor may be personal property until it is installed. Get comfortable with that distinction because it decides dozens of questions.

That leads directly to the fixture rule. A fixture is an item that was once personal property but has become attached to real property. Three tests decide whether something is a fixture: it is bought into the property, adapted to the property's use, or physically attached. Candidates memorize this with the MAST test — Method of attachment, Adaptability of the item, Size, and Tradition of the community. A built-in bookshelf bolted to the wall is a fixture; a free-standing shelf is not. There is one important carve-out: a trade fixture. A trade fixture is installed by a tenant for their business and may be removed when the lease ends. The restaurant tenant who installs ovens gets to take them out at the end of the lease, because trade fixtures stay the tenant's personal property while installed.

Now let us define what you actually own. Land is the earth's surface, the subsurface below it, and the airspace above it. Ownership extends down into the ground and up into the sky, subject to zoning and other limits. So a landowner owns the minerals below and the right to build above, unless those rights have been sold or restricted. An appurtenance is a right or privilege that attaches to real property and transfers with it — a shared driveway easement is the classic example. Appurtenances run with the land, meaning they move to the next owner automatically. And the bundle of rights is the legal rights of ownership itself: possession, control, enjoyment, exclusion, and disposition. All five rights — know them cold, because the exam loves asking which rights an owner can transfer separately. You can sell mineral rights while keeping surface rights; that is the bundle being split.

From rights, we move to how property gets legally described. There are three accepted systems, and a valid legal description has to be unambiguous and traceable. The first is metes and bounds: a description using distances and directions between boundary points, often starting at a point of beginning. The classic example reads like this: from the oak tree, north sixty feet, then east one hundred feet. Metes and bounds is used mostly for rural parcels and anywhere surveys are irregular. The second is lot and block: a description referencing a recorded subdivision plat's lot and block numbers. Lot 7, Block 2, Maple Heights Subdivision. Lot and block is common in subdivisions, but it only works if the plat is recorded. The third system is the government survey system, also called the rectangular survey, which is based on meridians, baselines, townships, and sections. This is the system used across most public land states, and the grid is a frequent exam topic.

Let us drill into the government survey system because it generates heavy math questions. A township is a six-mile by six-mile square, divided into thirty-six sections. Each section is one square mile. So remember the numbers: a township has thirty-six sections, and each section is one mile by one mile, containing six hundred forty acres. A section can be subdivided into halves and quarters. The corner exam question: the southwest quarter of a section contains one hundred sixty acres, because a section is six hundred forty acres and a quarter is one fourth of that. Another number you must memorize: an acre equals forty-three thousand five hundred sixty square feet. You will be asked to convert square feet into acres, so keep that constant locked in. A rectangular lot of one hundred feet by two hundred feet is twenty thousand square feet, which is about point four six of an acre.

Now a set of concepts that ties property to other people's rights: easements. An easement is a right to use another person's land for a specific purpose, without owning it. There are two main types, and the exam expects you to sort them. An easement appurtenant runs with the land — it benefits a dominant parcel and burdens a servient parcel, and it transfers automatically with the property. An easement in gross benefits a person or an entity rather than a parcel — the utility company's easement to run power lines across your lot is an easement in gross. There are also two ways easements get created by operation of law. An easement by necessity is created by law when a landlocked parcel needs access — the court creates a driveway easement over the neighbor's land because there is no other way in. An easement by prescription is acquired through open, notorious, continuous, and adverse use for the statutory period. The key is that prescription requires adverse use, not permission. After twenty years of openly using a path, a neighbor may acquire a prescriptive easement — but if the owner gave permission, the clock never runs.

Related to easements is the encroachment. An encroachment is a structure or improvement that extends onto another person's land without permission. Remember the distinction: an easement is a right, an encroachment is a physical object. A neighbor's fence crossing two feet onto the seller's property line is an encroachment. On exam day, when you see a fence, wall, or tree branch crossing the boundary, think encroachment.

Let us finish with water rights, because they always surprise people. Water rights are the legal rights to use water, and they follow one of two doctrines. Riparian rights belong to owners whose land borders a watercourse — a river or stream. Under the riparian doctrine, which is common east of the Mississippi, the bordering owner may use the water as long as the use is reasonable and does not substantially harm downstream owners. Littoral rights belong to owners whose land borders large lakes or seas, and those owners' rights usually extend to the high-water mark. The western states, in contrast, generally use prior appropriation: first in time, first in right. The first person to put the water to beneficial use gets the priority, regardless of where their land sits. The exam will hand you a fact pattern and ask which doctrine applies, so anchor on the geography: east is riparian, west is appropriation.

Time for a quick recap. Real property is land plus attachments plus the bundle of rights; personal property is moveable. Fixtures are determined by the MAST test, and trade fixtures belong to the tenant. Land includes surface, subsurface, and airspace, and appurtenances run with the land. The three legal description systems are metes and bounds, lot and block, and the government survey. One township is thirty-six sections, each section is six hundred forty acres, and an acre is forty-three thousand five hundred sixty square feet. Easements are rights; encroachments are physical. Water rights split into riparian for watercourses, littoral for lakes and seas, and prior appropriation in the west.

That is module two. When you can explain fixtures and the government survey to a friend without notes, you are ready to move on. Next up is module three: forms of ownership and estates, where we sort out who actually owns what and how ownership transfers. And remember, the full Real Estate License Exam Prep guide with all two hundred ten terms is linked in the description — it pairs perfectly with these module study sheets. See you in module three.