Absentee landlord
Encyclopedia
Absentee landlord is an economic
term for a person who owns and rent
s out a profit
-earning property
, but does not live within the property's local economic region. This practice is problematic for that region because absentee landlords drain local wealth into their home country, particularly that of rural areas
and the Third World
. The term "absentee ownership" was popularised by economist
Thorstein Veblen
's book of the same name, Absentee ownership.
When used in a local context, the term refers to a landlord
of a house or other real estate
, who lease
s the property to tenant
s, but fails to ensure that proper maintenance
is done on it. This in turn leads to what may appear to be abandoned buildings, causing significantly-lowered property values and urban blight.
Tax policy
seems, overall, to favour absentee ownership. However, some jurisdictions seek to extract money from absentee owners by taxing land. Absentee ownership has sometimes put the absentee owners at risk of loss. Research suggests that net of other factors, foreign ownership has a negligible impact on the environmental performance of chemical plants. Research also indicates that in Mongolia, there is little indication that high rates of absentee ownership have detrimental ecological or social effects.
. During the course of 16th and 17th centuries, most of the land in Ireland was confiscated from Irish Catholic landowners during the Plantations of Ireland
and granted to English
settlers who were members of the established churches (the Church of England
and the Church of Ireland
at the time); in Ulster, many of the landowners were Presbyterians, also known as English Dissenters
. Seized land was given to English nobles and soldiers, some of whom rented it out to the Irish, while they themselves remained residents of England. By 1782 the Irish patriot Henry Grattan
deplored that some £800,000 was transferred annually to such landlords. He attempted to place an extra tax on remittances to England. But many absentees also reinvested part of their rents into roads and bridges, to improve local economies, that are still seen today. A notable beneficial absentee in the 19th century was Lord Palmerston, who went into debt to develop his part of Sligo; an investment that eventually paid off.
By the 1800s resentment grew as not only were the absentee landlords Protestant
(while most tenants were Catholic and forbidden to own land), but their existence meant that the wealth of the land was always exported. This system became particularly detrimental to the native population during the Great Irish Famine when, despite Ireland being a net exporter of food, millions starved, died of disease, or fled the country. In the years following, the land issue with the Irish Land League's Land War
became a significant issue in Ireland. The land issue was one of the historic factors which resulted in Ireland's troubled history until the 1920s, though it had largely been addressed legislatively by 1903 in the Irish Land Acts
.
A survey of the 5,000 largest Irish landlords in 1872 revealed that 71% lived on their estates, and by then 43% had converted to Catholicism. This suggests that the use of such terms as "absentee landlord", and categorising all landlords as being members of a "Protestant Ascendancy", did not entirely reflect the reality on the ground after the middle of the 19th century, and may have been used thereafter for emotive effect as a reminder of centuries of earlier abuses.
's decision to become a part of Canada when the idea of Confederation
was proposed in 1867. In the mid-1760s, a survey team divided the Island into 67 lots. On July 1, 1767, these properties were allocated to supporters of King George III by means of a lottery. Ownership of the land remained in the hands of landlords in England, angering Island settlers who were unable to gain title to land on which they worked and lived. Significant rent charges (to absentee land lords) created further anger. The land had been given to the absentee landlords with a number of conditions attached regarding upkeep and settlement terms; many of these conditions were not satisfied. Islanders spent decades trying to convince the Crown to confiscate the lots, however the descendants of the original owners were generally well connected to the British government and refused to give up the land.
In 1853, the Island government passed the Land Purchase Act which empowered them to purchase lands from those owners who were willing to sell, and then resell the land to settlers for low prices. This scheme collapsed when the Island ran short of money to continue with the purchases. Many of these lands also were fertile, and were some of the key factors to sustaining Prince Edward Island's economy.
In 1864, the Island government saw union with Canada as a possible solution to the landlord crisis. This followed a rent strike
and riots on the Island. At the Charlottetown Conference
, delegates proposed a fund to purchase landlords' holdings if the Island joined Confederation. Several weeks later at the Quebec Conference this offer was withdrawn. The Island resolved not to enter Confederation as a result. The government refused offers from the other provinces and finally relented in 1873 after the local economy was pushed near to collapse. Under the terms of union, Canada agreed to provide the Island with an $800 000 fund to purchase the remaining absentee holdings. in 1875, the Land Purchase Act
was enacted to force owners of the large estates to sell their holdings to the provincial government.
The Island's experience with absentee landlords affects its land ownership laws to this day. Non-residents are not permitted to purchase land in excess of two hectare
s without approval from the cabinet. In 2009 an American was fined $
29,000 for contravening these laws. http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/cbc/091113/canada/canada_pei_pei_american_land_fine584
Prior to 1858, land in Ottoman Syria
, then a part of the Ottoman Empire
since 1516, was cultivated or occupied mainly by peasants. Land ownership was regulated by people living on the land according to customs and traditions. Usually, land was communally owned by village residents, though land could be owned by individuals or families.
In 1858 the Ottoman Empire introduced The Ottoman Land Code of 1858, requiring land owners to register ownership. The reasons behind the law were twofold. (1) to increase tax revenue, and (2) to exercise greater state control over the area. Peasants, however, saw no need to register claims, for several reasons:
The registration process itself was open to misregistration and manipulation. Land collectively owned by village residents ended up registered to one villager, and merchants and local Ottoman administrators took the opportunity to register large areas of land to their own name. The result was land that became the legal property of people who had never lived on the land, while the peasants, having lived there for generations, retained possession, but became tenants of absentee owners.
The 1856 emancipation Reform Decree and 1869 citizenship law was interpreted as giving Jews the right to own land in Ottoman Syria under their own name. The changing of this law (the change occurring at the same time as the freeing of the Africans in the United States and in South America and the emancipation of the serfs in Russia (held in slavery by the Russian landowning class) was a part of the worldwide 19th century movement towards emancipation and civil rights for oppressed minorities—and Jews were very much oppressed legally in Ottoman Syria. This 1873 secular land reform/civil rights law was popularly confused with a religious law and it was held as a "humiliation to Islam that Jews should own a part of the Muslim Ummah
". The confusion between religious and secular law made the laws (ended in 1873) against Jewish ownership of land 'religious laws'.
Over the course of the next decades land became increasingly concentrated on fewer hands; the peasants continued to work on the land, giving landlords a share of the harvest. This led to both an increased level of Arab nationalism as well as civil unrest. At the same time the area witnessed an increased flow of Jewish immigrants who did not restrict themselves to the cities where their concentration offered some protection from persecution. These new Jews came hoping to create a new future in what they regarded as the homeland of their ancestors. Organizations created to aid the Jewish migration to Ottoman Syria also bought land from absentee landowners. Jewish immigrants then settled on the land, sometimes replacing peasants already living there. A steady arrival of Jewish immigrants from 1882 led to several peasant insurgencies, recorded from as early as 1884-1886.
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
term for a person who owns and rent
Renting
Renting is an agreement where a payment is made for the temporary use of a good, service or property owned by another. A gross lease is when the tenant pays a flat rental amount and the landlord pays for all property charges regularly incurred by the ownership from landowners...
s out a profit
Profit (economics)
In economics, the term profit has two related but distinct meanings. Normal profit represents the total opportunity costs of a venture to an entrepreneur or investor, whilst economic profit In economics, the term profit has two related but distinct meanings. Normal profit represents the total...
-earning property
Property
Property is any physical or intangible entity that is owned by a person or jointly by a group of people or a legal entity like a corporation...
, but does not live within the property's local economic region. This practice is problematic for that region because absentee landlords drain local wealth into their home country, particularly that of rural areas
Rural sociology
Rural sociology is a field of sociology associated with the study of social life in non-metropolitan areas. It is the scientific study of social arrangements and behaviour amongst people distanced from points of concentrated population or economic activity...
and the Third World
Third World
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either capitalism and NATO , or communism and the Soviet Union...
. The term "absentee ownership" was popularised by economist
Economist
An economist is a professional in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy...
Thorstein Veblen
Thorstein Veblen
Thorstein Bunde Veblen, born Torsten Bunde Veblen was an American economist and sociologist, and a leader of the so-called institutional economics movement...
's book of the same name, Absentee ownership.
When used in a local context, the term refers to a landlord
Landlord
A landlord is the owner of a house, apartment, condominium, or real estate which is rented or leased to an individual or business, who is called a tenant . When a juristic person is in this position, the term landlord is used. Other terms include lessor and owner...
of a house or other real estate
Real estate
In general use, esp. North American, 'real estate' is taken to mean "Property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals, or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this; an item of real property; buildings or...
, who lease
Lease
A lease is a contractual arrangement calling for the lessee to pay the lessor for use of an asset. A rental agreement is a lease in which the asset is tangible property...
s the property to tenant
Leasehold estate
A leasehold estate is an ownership of a temporary right to land or property in which a lessee or a tenant holds rights of real property by some form of title from a lessor or landlord....
s, but fails to ensure that proper maintenance
Maintenance, Repair and Operations
Maintenance, repair, and operations or maintenance, repair, and overhaul involves fixing any sort of mechanical or electrical device should it become out of order or broken...
is done on it. This in turn leads to what may appear to be abandoned buildings, causing significantly-lowered property values and urban blight.
Tax policy
Tax policy
Tax policy is the government's approach to taxation, both from the practical and normative side of the question.-Philosophy:Policymakers debate the nature of the tax structure they plan to implement and how they might affect individuals and businesses .The reason for such foitution effect]],...
seems, overall, to favour absentee ownership. However, some jurisdictions seek to extract money from absentee owners by taxing land. Absentee ownership has sometimes put the absentee owners at risk of loss. Research suggests that net of other factors, foreign ownership has a negligible impact on the environmental performance of chemical plants. Research also indicates that in Mongolia, there is little indication that high rates of absentee ownership have detrimental ecological or social effects.
Absentee landlords in Ireland
Absentee Landlords were a highly significant issue in the History of IrelandHistory of Ireland
The first known settlement in Ireland began around 8000 BC, when hunter-gatherers arrived from continental Europe, probably via a land bridge. Few archaeological traces remain of this group, but their descendants and later Neolithic arrivals, particularly from the Iberian Peninsula, were...
. During the course of 16th and 17th centuries, most of the land in Ireland was confiscated from Irish Catholic landowners during the Plantations of Ireland
Plantations of Ireland
Plantations in 16th and 17th century Ireland were the confiscation of land by the English crown and the colonisation of this land with settlers from England and the Scottish Lowlands....
and granted to English
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
settlers who were members of the established churches (the Church of England
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
and the Church of Ireland
Church of Ireland
The Church of Ireland is an autonomous province of the Anglican Communion. The church operates in all parts of Ireland and is the second largest religious body on the island after the Roman Catholic Church...
at the time); in Ulster, many of the landowners were Presbyterians, also known as English Dissenters
English Dissenters
English Dissenters were Christians who separated from the Church of England in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.They originally agitated for a wide reaching Protestant Reformation of the Established Church, and triumphed briefly under Oliver Cromwell....
. Seized land was given to English nobles and soldiers, some of whom rented it out to the Irish, while they themselves remained residents of England. By 1782 the Irish patriot Henry Grattan
Henry Grattan
Henry Grattan was an Irish politician and member of the Irish House of Commons and a campaigner for legislative freedom for the Irish Parliament in the late 18th century. He opposed the Act of Union 1800 that merged the Kingdoms of Ireland and Great Britain.-Early life:Grattan was born at...
deplored that some £800,000 was transferred annually to such landlords. He attempted to place an extra tax on remittances to England. But many absentees also reinvested part of their rents into roads and bridges, to improve local economies, that are still seen today. A notable beneficial absentee in the 19th century was Lord Palmerston, who went into debt to develop his part of Sligo; an investment that eventually paid off.
By the 1800s resentment grew as not only were the absentee landlords Protestant
Protestant Ascendancy
The Protestant Ascendancy, usually known in Ireland simply as the Ascendancy, is a phrase used when referring to the political, economic, and social domination of Ireland by a minority of great landowners, Protestant clergy, and professionals, all members of the Established Church during the 17th...
(while most tenants were Catholic and forbidden to own land), but their existence meant that the wealth of the land was always exported. This system became particularly detrimental to the native population during the Great Irish Famine when, despite Ireland being a net exporter of food, millions starved, died of disease, or fled the country. In the years following, the land issue with the Irish Land League's Land War
Land War
The Land War in Irish history was a period of agrarian agitation in rural Ireland in the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s. The agitation was led by the Irish National Land League and was dedicated to bettering the position of tenant farmers and ultimately to a redistribution of land to tenants from...
became a significant issue in Ireland. The land issue was one of the historic factors which resulted in Ireland's troubled history until the 1920s, though it had largely been addressed legislatively by 1903 in the Irish Land Acts
Irish Land Acts
The Land Acts were a series of measures to deal with the question of peasant proprietorship of land in Ireland in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Five such acts were introduced by the government of the United Kingdom between 1870 and 1909...
.
A survey of the 5,000 largest Irish landlords in 1872 revealed that 71% lived on their estates, and by then 43% had converted to Catholicism. This suggests that the use of such terms as "absentee landlord", and categorising all landlords as being members of a "Protestant Ascendancy", did not entirely reflect the reality on the ground after the middle of the 19th century, and may have been used thereafter for emotive effect as a reminder of centuries of earlier abuses.
Absentee landlords in Prince Edward Island
An Absentee landlord crisis was a key factor in Prince Edward IslandPrince Edward Island
Prince Edward Island is a Canadian province consisting of an island of the same name, as well as other islands. The maritime province is the smallest in the nation in both land area and population...
's decision to become a part of Canada when the idea of Confederation
Confederation
A confederation in modern political terms is a permanent union of political units for common action in relation to other units. Usually created by treaty but often later adopting a common constitution, confederations tend to be established for dealing with critical issues such as defense, foreign...
was proposed in 1867. In the mid-1760s, a survey team divided the Island into 67 lots. On July 1, 1767, these properties were allocated to supporters of King George III by means of a lottery. Ownership of the land remained in the hands of landlords in England, angering Island settlers who were unable to gain title to land on which they worked and lived. Significant rent charges (to absentee land lords) created further anger. The land had been given to the absentee landlords with a number of conditions attached regarding upkeep and settlement terms; many of these conditions were not satisfied. Islanders spent decades trying to convince the Crown to confiscate the lots, however the descendants of the original owners were generally well connected to the British government and refused to give up the land.
In 1853, the Island government passed the Land Purchase Act which empowered them to purchase lands from those owners who were willing to sell, and then resell the land to settlers for low prices. This scheme collapsed when the Island ran short of money to continue with the purchases. Many of these lands also were fertile, and were some of the key factors to sustaining Prince Edward Island's economy.
In 1864, the Island government saw union with Canada as a possible solution to the landlord crisis. This followed a rent strike
Rent strike
A rent strike is a method of protest commonly employed against large landlords. In a rent strike, a group of tenants come together and agree to refuse to pay their rent en masse until a specific list of demands is met by the landlord...
and riots on the Island. At the Charlottetown Conference
Charlottetown Conference
The Charlottetown Conference was held in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island for representatives from the colonies of British North America to discuss Canadian Confederation...
, delegates proposed a fund to purchase landlords' holdings if the Island joined Confederation. Several weeks later at the Quebec Conference this offer was withdrawn. The Island resolved not to enter Confederation as a result. The government refused offers from the other provinces and finally relented in 1873 after the local economy was pushed near to collapse. Under the terms of union, Canada agreed to provide the Island with an $800 000 fund to purchase the remaining absentee holdings. in 1875, the Land Purchase Act
Land Purchase Act (1875)
The Land Purchase Act, 1875 was a statute in Prince Edward Island, Canada passed by the General Assembly of Prince Edward Island in 1875...
was enacted to force owners of the large estates to sell their holdings to the provincial government.
The Island's experience with absentee landlords affects its land ownership laws to this day. Non-residents are not permitted to purchase land in excess of two hectare
Hectare
The hectare is a metric unit of area defined as 10,000 square metres , and primarily used in the measurement of land. In 1795, when the metric system was introduced, the are was defined as being 100 square metres and the hectare was thus 100 ares or 1/100 km2...
s without approval from the cabinet. In 2009 an American was fined $
Canadian dollar
The Canadian dollar is the currency of Canada. As of 2007, the Canadian dollar is the 7th most traded currency in the world. It is abbreviated with the dollar sign $, or C$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies...
29,000 for contravening these laws. http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/cbc/091113/canada/canada_pei_pei_american_land_fine584
Absentee landlords in Palestine before 1948
The Ottoman Empire embarked on a systematic land reform programme in the second half of the 19th Century. Two of the new laws were the 1858 land registration law and the 1873 emancipation act.Prior to 1858, land in Ottoman Syria
Ottoman Syria
Ottoman Syria is a European reference to the area that during European Renaissance from the late 15th to early 18th century was called the Levant within the early period of the Ottoman Empire, the Orient until the early 19th century, and Greater Syria until 1918...
, then a part of the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
since 1516, was cultivated or occupied mainly by peasants. Land ownership was regulated by people living on the land according to customs and traditions. Usually, land was communally owned by village residents, though land could be owned by individuals or families.
In 1858 the Ottoman Empire introduced The Ottoman Land Code of 1858, requiring land owners to register ownership. The reasons behind the law were twofold. (1) to increase tax revenue, and (2) to exercise greater state control over the area. Peasants, however, saw no need to register claims, for several reasons:
- land owners were subject to military service in the Ottoman Army
- general opposition to official regulations from the Ottoman Empire
- evasion of taxes and registration fees to the Ottoman Empire
The registration process itself was open to misregistration and manipulation. Land collectively owned by village residents ended up registered to one villager, and merchants and local Ottoman administrators took the opportunity to register large areas of land to their own name. The result was land that became the legal property of people who had never lived on the land, while the peasants, having lived there for generations, retained possession, but became tenants of absentee owners.
The 1856 emancipation Reform Decree and 1869 citizenship law was interpreted as giving Jews the right to own land in Ottoman Syria under their own name. The changing of this law (the change occurring at the same time as the freeing of the Africans in the United States and in South America and the emancipation of the serfs in Russia (held in slavery by the Russian landowning class) was a part of the worldwide 19th century movement towards emancipation and civil rights for oppressed minorities—and Jews were very much oppressed legally in Ottoman Syria. This 1873 secular land reform/civil rights law was popularly confused with a religious law and it was held as a "humiliation to Islam that Jews should own a part of the Muslim Ummah
Ummah
Ummah is an Arabic word meaning "community" or "nation." It is commonly used to mean either the collective nation of states, or the whole Arab world...
". The confusion between religious and secular law made the laws (ended in 1873) against Jewish ownership of land 'religious laws'.
Over the course of the next decades land became increasingly concentrated on fewer hands; the peasants continued to work on the land, giving landlords a share of the harvest. This led to both an increased level of Arab nationalism as well as civil unrest. At the same time the area witnessed an increased flow of Jewish immigrants who did not restrict themselves to the cities where their concentration offered some protection from persecution. These new Jews came hoping to create a new future in what they regarded as the homeland of their ancestors. Organizations created to aid the Jewish migration to Ottoman Syria also bought land from absentee landowners. Jewish immigrants then settled on the land, sometimes replacing peasants already living there. A steady arrival of Jewish immigrants from 1882 led to several peasant insurgencies, recorded from as early as 1884-1886.
See also
- Land reformLand reform[Image:Jakarta farmers protest23.jpg|300px|thumb|right|Farmers protesting for Land Reform in Indonesia]Land reform involves the changing of laws, regulations or customs regarding land ownership. Land reform may consist of a government-initiated or government-backed property redistribution,...
- Anti-Rent WarAnti-Rent WarThe Anti-Rent War was a tenants' revolt in upstate New York during the early 19th century, beginning with the death of Stephen Van Rensselaer III in 1839....
- Absentee business ownerAbsentee business ownerAn absentee business owner is one who does not personally manage the business he owns, or who does not live in the community in which the business operates. Studies show that money spent locally re-circulates in the community three times as much as it does when it is spent with an absentee-owned...