stylistic:style_transfer, information:extraction
Subject matter

As noted above one cannot steal items "affixed to the earth" because such things are not personal property. However, one of the remarkable qualities of property is its shiftiness: its ability to change its character often and quickly, from real to personal and from personal to real. The principal methods of achieving this transformation are attachment and severance. If personal property is attached to land, it becomes real property. And if real property is severed from the land (rendered unattached) it becomes personal property. Examples abound. A person buys a furnace. The furnace company dispatches a technician to deliver and install the heating system. Before installation the heating system is personal property. It has corporeal presence and it can be moved around as witnessed by the fact that the technician picked it up at the warehouse, loaded it into his truck, drove it to the house, unloaded it, placed it in the basement and hooked it up to the house. The "hooking up" is the act that transformed what was personal property to real property. Once it is installed it has become "attached to the land" (the house) and is now considered real property. The attachment to the house has to be more than casual for personal property to become real property. For example, a table lamp that is plugged into a wall socket is not real property. A window air conditioning unit is not real property.