It is the physical, tangible “thing” which can be seen and touched, together with all additions on, above, or below the ground.

Local laws within each state prescribe the basis for disguising real estate from personal property.

Although these legal concepts may not be recognized in all states, they are adopted here to distinguish important terms and concepts.

Real property includes all the rights and benefits related to the ownership of real estate.

An interest or interests in real property is normally demonstrated by some evidence of ownership (e.g. a title deed) separate from the physical real estate.

Real property is a non-physical concept.

Personal property includes interests in tangible and intangible items which are not real estate.

Items of tangible personal property are not permanently affixed to real estate and are generally characterized by their movability.

In accounting terminology, assets are resources controlled by an entity as a result of past events and from which some future economic benefits are expected to flow to the entity.

Ownership of an asset is itself intangible.

However, the asset owned may be either tangible or intangible.

The term depreciation is used in different contexts in valuation and in financial reporting.

In the context of asset valuation, depreciation refers to the adjustments made to the cost of reproducing or replacing the asset to reflect physical deterioration and functional (technical) and economic (external) obsolescence in order to estimate the value of the asset in a hypothetical exchange in the market when there is no direct sales evidence available.

In financial reporting, depreciation refers to the charge made against income to reflect the systematic allocation of the depreciable amount of an asset over its useful life to the entity.

It is specific to the particular entity and its utilization of the asset, and is not necessarily affected by the market.