Do You Know Your Property Rights?

Property rights, as a whole, are the fundamental concept that an individual has the right to his or her property. An individual has property rights to all the property which he or she has control over in terms of its use and disposition. When two individuals exchange property, they are fundamentally exchanging property rights for the property in question.

The entire property market thrives on this conception of property rights, as without property rights, there could be no property market in which property is exchanged between different parties for other pieces of property. Property rights are also critical for the functioning of a property market because property rights determine what exactly a given individual can do with property, beyond merely using it and selling it.

An individual with property rights to a given piece of property would not only be able to use that property as he or she saw fit, but he or she would also be able to rent that property or lease it to a different user as he or she saw fit, which allows for a versatility within the property market that would not necessarily be present otherwise.

If, for example, a given individual held property rights to a piece of hunting property, then he or she might actually choose to exert those property rights in order to disallow anyone else from using that hunting property. The same individual could use his or her property rights in order to allow individuals to rent that hunting property, however, thereby opening up a new opportunity on the property market.

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