Jessica, thanks for explaining that. I've always been curious, but forget to look it up when I'm near a computer.

Here there is a big fuss over ground rent. You own the structure, but pay rent on the lot. It's usually not much but people can lose their homes over past-due rents that are much, much less than the value of the home (like a few thousand.) And the system is antiquated, so records are really sketchy. It's all fascinating.

I love the assistants on Ugly Betty.

Why am I so cruel to commas? I don't know.

Here there is a big fuss over ground rent. You own the structure, but pay rent on the lot.

Fascinating. Around here, that's something you'd only see with temporary structures (e.g. trailer parks) -- but in that case, there's a development with a clear owner, not scattered individual lots or sketchy old records. In those cases, who generally owns the lot?

(Yes, I'm a dork about all these regional oddities.)

I think it's more that condos are more common in some places and co-ops in New York others.

Heh -- yep, NYC is co-op-land all right. (The book we have on "how to buy condos, co-ops, and townhouses" is all full of paragraphs on why you should avoid co-ops, mostly due to the fact that your bank will have no idea how to deal with one if you don't live on the East Coast. But most older owner-occupied buildings in NYC are co-ops -- if you move into a condo, it's probably a newer building.)

Co-ops came first, right?

I don't know, but given that co-ops outnumber condos in NYC (where most of the country's oldest apartment buildings are), it wouldn't surprise me.

In those cases, who generally owns the lot?

Um, I'd have to go look. I think there are companies that go around buying up these lost/unclaimed lots, which adds to the confusion.

The Baltimore Sun did a whole series on this topic at [link]

Anyone watching Earl?

(Keep in mind, some ground rents are $25/year. So it's crazy.)

(Keep in mind, some ground rents are $25/year. So it's crazy.)

Utterly. And I've just started the articles you linked to, but it makes total sense that it's a freaky colonial vestige that exists in the US only in Maryland and Pennsylvania; it goes back to ye olde feudalism, when common people couldn't buy or sell land (but impoverished lords could give out 99-year infinitely renewable leases as a handy sort of fundraiser).

But, really, I'm only bringing this up to point out that according to wikipedia, those nobles who had the right to make such deals in Scotland were called "The Lords of Erection". Because even when obsessed with real estate, I'm twelve.

THE SONGS DON'T LOAD ANY FASTER IF YOU WATCH THE PROGRESS METER SARA!!!! WALK AWAY!