Medieval real estate?

[cupbearer]

Originally Posted by robertsconley

I wrote a blog post on this after researching the matter.
https://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2...n-fantasy.html

Basically the value of the property is the value that the owner paid for it including construction costs. Basically, it wrapped up in the medieval ideas around what is a just price. While Just Price has its nuances and varies throughout the medieval era. For the purpose of gaming is the rule is that the cost of the property is it's "just price" and thus it's sale value. To try to sell it for more carries with it a lot of social stigma and may be even a crime during certain time periods and jurisdiction.

The problem with buying over building is availability. You are often better off trying to build on a vacant lot or land than trying to buy and existing property that not only housing but a source of income for the owner.

Again this is a simplification but something that modern gamers can wrap their heads around that reflects medieval sentiments.

Wow! Very cool. I will check it out!

[bocephus]

It seems like everyone (I admit I skimmed some posts that got mathy) has forgotten that one of the great reforms of the US constitution and maybe the Magna Carte before it (not my area of expertise) was that Individual Property rights didn't really exist in the West.

You didn't buy property in the Medieval world, you couldn't. You had a "right" to it, or you didn't. That was mostly by right of arms, but there were other reasons (most were by virtue of someone else's might of arms), or just that you were claiming land no one wanted at the time.

You might be able to buy the right to occupy from a noble or their representative, but you never "owned it" (unless you were said noble). They could put you out with little reason and unless you had the ability to stand up against them, you were now homeless.

Even if your family was given a Charter or something, one change of leadership could render it void because the Duke/King/Bishop that gave it to you was now seen as a traitor and all his land and titles forfeit. That means anything he signed as well.

One of the great changes that made America the place so many immigrant did want to go to was the idea that you could actually OWN your land and no one could just take it from you.

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by bocephus

One of the great changes that made America the place so many immigrant did want to go to was the idea that you could actually OWN your land and no one could just take it from you.

Well, unless you don't pay property taxes or the government decides to seize your land by eminent domain.

Originally Posted by bocephus

Even if your family was given a Charter or something, one change of leadership could render it void because the Duke/King/Bishop that gave it to you was now seen as a traitor and all his land and titles forfeit.

That probably has more to do with those kinds of changes in leadership are generally violent and chaotic. And even still aggravating the land owning class is a foolish idea. Regardless, it only came down to King following Quia Emptores which banned subenfeudation, instead mandating substitution (i.e. the new holder of the land would accept all the obligations of the previous holder)

Originally Posted by bocephus

You might be able to buy the right to occupy from a noble or their representative, but you never "owned it" (unless you were said noble). They could put you out with little reason and unless you had the ability to stand up against them, you were now homeless.

Maybe. And if you do that the peasant/knight/etc. you booted off the land now owes you nothing.

Feudal societies were built on interlocking contracts of duties. The lord hands out land and let's peasants live and farm there, they pay the lord back in labour on the lord's farm, labour on a corvee, a share of the crop, money, military service, etc. If you evict a peasant, great you get the land back, but unless you have someone else to farm the land (or perhaps something else in mind, like herding sheep), the whole affair's a tremendous waste.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by TGLS

Feudal societies were built on interlocking contracts of duties. The lord hands out land and let's peasants live and farm there, they pay the lord back in labour on the lord's farm, labour on a corvee, a share of the crop, money, military service, etc. If you evict a peasant, great you get the land back, but unless you have someone else to farm the land (or perhaps something else in mind, like herding sheep), the whole affair's a tremendous waste.

You often couldn't legally evict those peasants either = part of the deal their ancestor(s) made that made them a peasant with a certain patch of land was that they would be able to farm it in peace as long as they met the obligations they took on.

Just throwing peasants off their land tended to go very bad, because now all your other farmers had no reason to trust that you wouldn't try to do that to them, too. Sometimes attempts to throw tenants off their land (usually to run sheep on it) worked, but other times they ended in a lot of violence, and weren't always successful. Also, the really big changes (such as the 'enclosures') were post-medieval, after changes from custom and oaths to written law and deeds had removed much of the tenants' rights (and in some cases also converted tenancy to a simple cash rent, allowing inflation to impoverish many minor lords).

Overall, 'where' and 'when' are very important when it comes to property rights, ownership, and control, just as with everything else medieval.

[robertsconley]

Originally Posted by bocephus

You didn't buy property in the Medieval world, you couldn't. You had a "right" to it, or you didn't. That was mostly by right of arms, but there were other reasons (most were by virtue of someone else's might of arms), or just that you were claiming land no one wanted at the time.

Yes but what does this mean in terms of what the players see as their characters in a way that is understandable?

I think the situation can be illustrated by what happened to the estate of Aunou-le-Faucon in The Last Duel.

At first, it was to be turned over as part of Marguerite de Thibouville's dowry.

But later de Carrouges strongarmed her father to turn it over the satisfy the taxes he owed to Count Pierre. Who in turn gifts it to de Carrouges.

In a nutshell, while there was money involved it boiled down to who you knew and how you know them. Which also implies that the likelihood of just being able to waltz with a bag of gold and buy a piece of land or building was almost nil.

However, a smart PC or a group can spend a few sessions getting to know the folks in the regions. Doing a few favors, and then finding out who just died, owed taxes, or any number of other things where the need for gold outweighed interest in keeping the property.

Or if it is that kind of PC group then get in good with that region's "Count Pierre" and leverage his (or her) influence to get the building or land they want.

Or if the central authority is weak, make the owner an offer that they can't refuse if the PCs are able to exert that kind of violence.

And while the Last Duel doesn't go into depth about this part. The deeds in many western European countries were highly idiosyncratic. Like how in modern times the mineral rights to a property don't always accompany ownership of the land but on steroids.

In gaming terms, this can be presented by outlining a few standard feudal/imperial conditions or right, like military service, with one or two unique things for the property the PC is about to buy or gain.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by bocephus

You didn't buy property in the Medieval world, you couldn't. You had a "right" to it, or you didn't. That was mostly by right of arms, but there were other reasons (most were by virtue of someone else's might of arms), or just that you were claiming land no one wanted at the time.

To some degree that's a semantic argument. You could undoubtedly spend money to acquire land. The fact that you were spending that money on troops, construction, or bribes rather than a simple business transaction doesn't mean that the high level transaction wasn't money for land, it's just done in an inefficient way.

Of course, inefficient also means a lot more adventure potential.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by bocephus

You didn't buy property in the Medieval world, you couldn't. You had a "right" to it, or you didn't. That was mostly by right of arms, but there were other reasons (most were by virtue of someone else's might of arms), or just that you were claiming land no one wanted at the time.

This is of course highly sensitive to when and where. Roman law had a perfectly good mechanism of acquiring pretty much absolute ownership (dominium), though there were periods when a lot of property was held by usucapio - which is a different standard that we still see traces of in laws like adverse possession or squatters right. There were plenty of places Roman law or its derivatives functioned clean through the Middle Ages, and much of it was readopted in mainland Europe (from the Code Justinian) as societies got complex enough again to need more law.

The sort of conditional relative ownership people seem to be considering medieval here is a Germanic system, so it mostly held for northwestern Europe. England being a weird outlier that adopted big bits of law from multiple sources and somehow made them work together, and then largely [didn't] readopt the Justinian code, those of us familiar with English law (medieval or modern) tend to have a slightly weird view of what law was and is like elsewhere.

[Celjabba]

Originally Posted by bocephus

You didn't buy property in the Medieval world, you couldn't. You had a "right" to it, or you didn't. That was mostly by right of arms, but there were other reasons (most were by virtue of someone else's might of arms), or just that you were claiming land no one wanted at the time.

You might be able to buy the right to occupy from a noble or their representative, but you never "owned it" (unless you were said noble). They could put you out with little reason and unless you had the ability to stand up against them, you were now homeless.

I freely admit that this is not my area of expertise either, but I would like to see some link to studies, because as far as I know, this was definitively not universal in Medieval time. Common, perhaps, but not everywhere and everywhen.

See for example the French (and Belgian) Alleux (especially the small, not sovereign ones).
Various piece of lands that were not subordinate to any right but were personal property by the will of God. Some had various sovereign right (and for example all the lands of the French King were said to be such for him), some were town or estates, and some were just small farms and bit of land with no special right of any kind attached to their possession.

In Old Germanic, the difference between Odal (the right to something) and Alod (the absolute property), iirc.

Also, I believe that what you claim properly apply to land, that is to say, farmland, forest, ... ie "fief".

Not for house in cities. There certainly was an urban property market as early as the XI-XIII centuries in many cities, in Flanders and Italy mainly. Merchant and bourgeois would buy and sell houses and/or plot of land, and they certainly were regarded as owning them for all practical purposes.
Of course, as you said, if someone powerful wanted what was yours, they could take it ... which was also the case under Roman property law, and is still the case nowadays. The 'feodal' mindset may made it less offensive, but it wasn't always legal.