Landholding

In real estate, a landed property or landed estate is a property that generates income for the owner without the owner having to do the actual work of the estate. In medieval Western Europe, there were two competing systems of landed property, on one hand manoralism, inherited from the Roman villa system, where a large estate is owned by the Lord of the Manor and leased to tenants, and on the other hand the family farm or owned by and heritable within a commoner family (c.f. yeoman), inherited from Germanic law.

A gentleman farmer is the largely historic term used to describe a country gentleman who has a farm as part of his estate and farms mainly for pleasure rather than for profit. His acreage may vary from under ten to hundreds of acres. The gentleman farmer employed labourers and farm managers. However, according to the 1839 Encyclopedia of Agriculture, he "did not associate with these minor working brethren". The chief source of income for the gentleman farmer was derived not from any income that his landed property may generate; he had either access to his own private income, he worked as a professional and/or he owned a large business elsewhere. Or all three.

Modern landed property often consists of housing or industrial land, generating income in the form of rents or fees for services provided by the facilities on the land, such as port facilities. Owners often commission an estate map to help manage their estate as well as serving as a status symbol.

Landed property was a key element of feudalism, and freed the owner for other tasks, such as government administration, military service, the practice of Law, or religious practices.

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