The legal arrangement for the right to occupy a dwelling is known as the housing tenure. Types of housing tenure include owner occupancy, Tenancy, housing cooperative, condominiums individually parceled properties in a single building, public housing, and squatting. Variants include timeshares and cohousing.

Residences can be classified by if and how they are connected to neighboring residences and land. Different types of housing tenure can be used for the same physical type. For example, connected residents might be owned by a single entity and leased out, or owned separately with an agreement covering the relationship between units and common areas and concerns.

Real estate is a legal term (in some jurisdictions, notably in the USA that encompasses land along with anything permanently affixed to the land, such as buildings, specifically property that is stationary, or fixed in location.

With the development of private property ownership, real estate has become a major area of business. Purchasing real estate requires a significant investment, and each parcel of land has unique characteristics, so the real estate industry has evolved into several distinct fields. Specialists are often called on to valuate real estate and facilitate transactions. Some kinds of real estate businesses include:

Appraisal: Professional valuation servicesBrokerages: Assisting buyers and sellers in transactionsDevelopment: Improving land for use by adding or replacing buildingsProperty management: Managing a property for its owner.Real Estate Marketing: Managing the sales side of the property businessReal Estate Investing: Managing the investment of real estateRelocation services, Relocating people or business to a different countryCorporate Real Estate: Managing the real estate held by a corporation to support its core business—unlike managing the real estate held by an investor to generate incomeWithin each field, a business may specialize in a particular type of real estate, such as residential, commercial, or industrial property. In addition, almost all construction business effectively has a connection to real estate.Internet Real Estate is a term coined by the internet investment community relating to ownership of domain names and the similarities between high quality internet domain names and real-world, prime real estate.Real estate is often considered synonymous with real property also sometimes called realty, in contrast with personal property also sometimes called chattel or personalty.