The law defines property in a general legal category as a right of a person to use, enjoy or possess a determinant thing and prohibit others from using the same. The law assures a person the rights of ownership in land, money, tangible objects and intangible objects. Within the arena of law, property control is assured by the power of the law, or by power exercised under the law, and not by any separate power. The property right envisages ownership and possession as belongings to legal individuals, even if the individual is not a real person.

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The supporters of capitalism believe property rights as the most important right. According to them, such rights encourage the property holders to develop the property and generate wealth. On the other hand, the socialist and communist groups tend to be more suspicious of the property rights. They believe that the property rights are used by the ruling elites to rob the masses of their wealth. The libertarians socialist have always supported the abolishment of property rights. They believe that all the property should be shared.

The concept of property changes place to place. Like the African hunter-gatherer societies don’t have ownership of land like the agricultural societies. For them ownership of water holes is more important than the ownership of land. The ownership of land holds great economical value for the agricultural society.

Property rights can be classified in terms of a bundle of rights. Traditionally, property rights are thought of as:

• Control over use
• Right to benefits of property
• Transfer or sell
• Right to exclude non-owners

However, not every person, or entity having an interest in a piece of property is able to exercise all the rights. As a tenant of a particular piece of property, you are not given the rights of selling the property. The selling rights are one of the rights in the bundle reserved for the owner. Same way the owner has no rights to keep the tenant away from the leased property unless the tenant has stopped paying rents or sued to regain access.

There are number of ways you can hold a property. For instance: joint ownership, community property, sole ownership, lease... In a joint ownership property, an individual have a limited recourse for the actions of the other. There are always chances of one of the owners selling his/her share of property to a stranger that the other owner does not like. The types of property therefore tend to complicate an owner’s ability to exercise his/her rights unilaterally.

According to most of the legal systems, property is divided into two types:

• Real property- The common law jurisdiction defines real property as immovable properties that include ownership of land, building and many legal relationships between the owners of the real estate. A real property can be jointly held by tenants with the right of survivorship or as tenants as common.

• Personal property- Also known as chattels, personal property includes the entire movable properties. It is divided into tangible and intangible property where tangible property includes cars, clothing, animals and so on. While intangible property or abstract property includes stocks, bond bank deposits, derivatives, options, futures, patent copyrights and trademarks.