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Personal property is a type of property. In the common law systems personal property may also be called chattels. It is distinguished from real property, or real estate or realty. In the civil law systems personal property is often called movable property or movables - any property that can be moved from one location or another. This term is in distinction with immovable property or immovables, such as land and buildings.
Personal property may be classified in a variety of ways, such as goods, money, negotiable instruments, securities, and intangible assets including choses in action.
The distinction between these types of property is significant for a variety of reasons. Usually one's rights on movables are more attenuated than one's rights on immovables (or real property). The statutes of limitations or prescriptive periods are usually shorter when dealing with personal or movable property. Real property rights are usually enforceable for a much longer period of time and in most jurisdictions real estate and immovables are registered in government-sanctioned land registers. In some jurisdictions, rights (such as a lien or other security interest) can be registered against personal or movable property.
In the common law it is possible to place a mortgage upon real property. Such mortgage requires payment or the owner of the mortgage can seek foreclosure. Personal property can often be secured with similar kind of device, variously called a chattel mortgage, trust receipt, or security interest. In the United States, Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code governs the creation and enforcement of security interests in most (but not all) types of personal property.
There is no similar institution to the mortgage in the civil law, however a hypothec is a device to secure real rights against property. These real rights follow the property along with the ownership. In the common law a lien also remains on the property and it is not extinguished by alienation of the property; liens may be real or equitable.
Many jurisdictions levy a personal property tax, an annual tax on the privilege of owning or possessing personal property within the boundaries of the jurisdiction. Automobile and boat registration fees are a subset of this tax. Most household goods are exempt as long as they are kept or used within the household; the tax usually becomes a problem when the taxing authority discovers that expensive personal property like art is being regularly stored outside of the household.
Other meanings
The term personal property is also used with meanings that have no connection to the above. Specifically, Marxism and some anarchists draw a distinction between personal property and private property: Private property refers to items that are either means of production (for example factories) or goods whose nature allows them to be shared and used by different people (for example cars). Personal property refers to goods that, by their nature, are meant to be used by only one person (for example a sandwich, or a toothbrush). This distinction is important in discussions about communism and communist and syndicalist anarchism (in the sense of an economic system), because these systems abolish private property but not personal property. In other words, things such as factories and cars are public property, but things such as sandwiches and toothbrushes remain personal posessions. The rights associated with personal posessions in communism and anarchism may not be the same as in capitalism or other systems, however. To be more exact, personal property in communism and communist anarchism implies the right to exclusive use (no one may use your toothbrush without your permission), but it does not imply the right to buy and sell. One possible model of distribution of personal posessions in communism is as follows: A publicly owned factory produces toothbrushes. These toothbrushes are then placed in some sort of "common stockpile", where people who need a toothbrush can go and pick one. As soon as a person picks a toothbrush from the "common stockpile", that brush becomes his personal property until it is worn out and he throws it away.
Note: Communism should not be confused with socialism; socialism does not abolish private property over anything other than the means of production. Thus, in socialism, toothbrushes - or, for that matter, cars - can be bought and sold.
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