Leasehold

A leasehold is the estate a lease creates — a possessory interest for a term, which at sufficient duration behaves like ownership: it can be bought, sold, mortgaged, and subdivided, all while the underlying fee belongs to someone else. Ground-leased towers, leasehold condominiums, and long-term commercial positions all trade as leaseholds.

The interest's defining property is decay: value amortizes toward the term's end, financing tightens as maturities approach the reversion, and every leasehold analysis is a remaining-term analysis. In records, leasehold instruments — memoranda, leasehold mortgages, assignments — mark where the building's operator and the land's owner are different parties with different clocks.