Real Estate Marketing Online is often considered synonymous with real property, in contrast with personal property. However, for technical purposes, some people prefer to distinguish Real Estate Lead Generation, referring to the land and fixtures themselves, from real property, referring to ownership rights over Real Estate Marketing. The terms Real Estate Marketing Online and real property are used primarily in common law, while civil law jurisdictions refer instead to immovable property.

In recent years, many economists have not recognized that the lack of effective Real Estate Marketing Online can be a significant barrier to investment in many developing countries. In most societies, rich or poor, a significant fraction of the total wealth is in the form of land and buildings. In most advanced economies, the main source of capital used by individuals and small companies to purchase and improve land and buildings is mortgages -- bank loans for which the real property itself constitutes collateral. Banks are willing to make such loans at favorable rates in large part because if the borrower does not make payments the lender can foreclose, that is file a court action that lets them take the property and sell it to get their money back. But in many developing countries there is no effective means by which a lender could foreclose, so the mortgage loan industry as such either does not exist at all or is only available to members of privileged social classes.

In spite of the name, Real Estate Marketing Online has no connection with the concept of reality. It derives instead from the feudal principle that in a monarchy, all land was considered the property of the king. Thus originally the term Real Estate Marketing Online was equivalent to "royal estate", real originating from the French royal, as it was the French-speaking Normans who introduced feudalism to England and thus to the English language; cognate to Spanish real.

With the development of private property ownership, Real Estate Marketing Online has become a major area of business. Real Estate Marketing Online requires a significant investment, and each parcel of land has unique characteristics, so the real estate industry has evolved into several distinct fields.

Real Estate Marketing Online is, by its nature, an expensive non-liquid asset. This means that it costs a lot of money to own it, and it can be difficult to sell. In development activity, there are also the added costs of improvements themselves  and the fees of various and sundry consultants necessary to get the work done properly. Because expense is high, sale is difficult, and return on investment is delayed, Real Estate Marketing Online is inherently risky. A large part of the work of developers is the management of risk.

Because the amounts of money involved are typically very large, a majority of Real Estate Marketing Online projects are financed with a large amount of debt leverage. While more leverage increases potential profit, it also magnifies risks and builds in a periodic negative cash flow. Projects will generally be profitable if the upfront commitment of cash is kept to a minimum and the project can quickly start generating a positive cash flow sufficient to cover debt service.