Sofista
Deity
Question for anyone: I noticed that in Europe real estate is often referred to as "this-thing-does-not-move" i.e. immobile or the Polish nieruchomosc. Is that just a language thing or is it a cultural thing? We just call it real estate here in North America as far as we know. When I first heard the Polish term, I was confused what they were advertising, since only humans, animals, and some plants move. Any idea where this way of referring to real estate originates? (the linguistic origins - Latin?, or historic)
I used to think that's a silly Polish thing, but now I've seen it in other European countries too.
Well, here it's a legal distinction between '[bene] mobile' ('movable good') and '[bene] immobile' ('immovable good'); and yes, it all comes from Latin ('mobilis/immobilis bonum').
In our Civil law (art. 815), basically, immovable goods are 'land, streams, waterways, buildings and other constructions, and generally whatever is naturally or artificially tethered to land [...] all others are movable'. So, movable goods are defined by exclusion.
The difference from what I can see is that all immovable goods have a registered owner (if they don't, for example should anyone die without heirs and leave fields and houses behind, they'd become state property by default) and change of property has to be documented. This isn't true for a lot of immovable goods, but some of those (like cars) are by law on par with immobile ones.