real estate
- 1Property that cannot easily be moved, usually buildings and the land they are built on.
Investors poured money into commercial real estate downtown after the new transit line opened.
The family's real estate included two farms and a small apartment building on the edge of town.
Note
A lawyer's adjective sits inside this phrase: real carries its legal meaning, relating to immovable, tangible property, which goes back to Latin reālis. It has nothing to do with "genuine." As a property term the phrase belongs to the US, Canada and Australia, and it is uncountable: investors buy real estate, never a real estate.
- 2Relating to property that cannot easily be moved, usually buildings and the land they are built on.
The real-estate market cooled sharply once mortgage rates began to climb.
She hired a real-estate lawyer to review the contract before closing on the house.
Note
The noun is put to work in front of another noun here: a real-estate lawyer, the real-estate market. The hyphen is optional; many writers leave the pair open (a real estate agent) and the meaning does not change. What does not change either is its grammar: nothing can be more real-estate than something else, so the adjective takes neither more nor very.
- 3Space used for a particular purpose, such as the area of a computer screen.
Collapsing the side panel frees up valuable screen real estate for the spreadsheet itself.
Every inch of real estate on the kitchen counter was taken up by appliances and mail.
Similarspace
Note
The figure treats space as if it were land, something limited and valuable that can be claimed, crowded or freed up. It grew directly from the property sense. Preston Gralla's Big Book of Windows Hacks (2007) applies it to a computer display, where virtual desktops "stretch your screen real estate." The tone stays informal, so formal writing is better served by space or area.
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Origin
An estate that is 'real' in the legal sense of 'relating to immovable tangible property.' This sense of the word real ultimately goes back to Latin, where reālis could be used in a similar way.