One-Page Learn · The Halachos at a glance
הלכות מכירה
Mechirah 25-27 · Sales, Chapters 25 to 27
Sefer Kinyan · What travels with a thing when it changes hands: houses, courtyards, presses and bathhouses, then towns and fields, then movables and living things, and the local custom that overrides every default.
4
Cubits of width that make a patio or roof its own place
100
Garments sold with a maid-servant, if she wears that many
¼
Se'ah sowing area: a reed bed this size is never sold
0
Proof the price gives about what was sold
Ch 25House, Courtyard, Olive Press, Bathhouse
- A wide patio is its own place. A sold house does not include a surrounding patio four cubits or more wide; narrower than that it is treated as part of the house and is sold. A loft opening into the house through the ceiling is part of the house. (25:1)
- Drawn boundaries do not help the buyer. A room behind the house is not included even where the seller drew the external borders of the property around it, and neither is a cistern or a receptacle hollowed into the ground, even where he sold the height and the depth. (25:2)
- A retained cistern comes without a path. A seller who keeps a cistern must buy a right of way from the buyer, because a person sells generously; saying "except the cistern" at the time of sale spares him that purchase. (25:3)
- Attached is sold, movable is not. Oven, range, mortared doorframes, door, beam, lock and a mill fixed in the ground go with a house; the key, a movable mill, the flour bin and the window frames do not. (25:5)
- A shop is judged by where its work happens. A courtyard carries the shops that open into it; one opening both ways follows the majority of its activity, and a bathhouse or olive press inside is never included however broadly the seller speaks. (25:6)
- "Accessories" reaches further than "contents." "The press and all its contents" sweeps in the inner gear; "the press and all its accessories" reaches the storage rooms standing outside the building, and for a bathhouse even its summer and winter pools. (25:8-9)
RememberThe lock is sold and the key is not. What is sunk into the house travels with the house.
Ch 26The Town, The Field, And Local Custom
- Facing, not distance. A sold town includes the pens for animals, fowl and fish that face it even when far away, and excludes unassociated fields, outlying villages, distant woods and the pens that face away. (26:1)
- Placed is not the same as prepared. Fence stones already stacked and reeds already laid under the vines are sold; the same stones and planed reeds merely readied are not, and standing grain goes while cut grain stays. (26:2)
- Named things never pass. Whatever the seller said, a reed bed the size of a quarter-se'ah sowing area, a spice plot with a name of its own, a hut without mortar, a grafted carob, a water reservoir, a grape press and a dovecote stay with him. (26:3)
- A gift carries everything attached. The narrow defaults bind a sale only, since the buyer should have spoken; a gift, a brother's share on dividing an inheritance, a convert's estate taken over and a consecrated field all convey everything attached unless stated otherwise. (26:5-6)
- Custom outranks the lists. Where local practice or the local meaning of a word settles what is included, that governs, even unspoken; the Sages' rules apply only where there is no custom and no settled meaning. (26:7-8)
- A path follows a retained item here too. A seller who keeps a reservoir, grape press or dovecote in a sold field must buy access, unless he said at the time "the field, except for these." (26:4)
RememberTwo chapters of lists are the law of silence. Custom is the law of sale.
Ch 27Movables, Living Things, And The Price
- A ship sells its rigging, not its tenders. Mast, sail, anchors, steering ropes, ramp, ladder and the drinking-water reservoir are included; the shore boat, the fishing dinghy, the crew and the cargo are not. (27:1)
- Pairings follow usage, not logic. A single yoke carries its cow and a wagon carries its oxen, yet selling oxen does not carry the wagon and selling a yoke does not carry the oxen even where people say "oxen" for a team. (27:2-3)
- The price proves nothing. Ordinary mispricing is handled by the laws of ona'ah; an error far beyond the ordinary does not undo the sale, and the excess is treated as a present, so the buyer keeps the donkey without the saddlebags. (27:4-5)
- Garments pass, ornaments do not. A sold maid-servant comes with the clothes she is wearing, a hundred of them if she is wearing a hundred, but not a bracelet, nose ring, finger ring or neck band unless the seller said "and everything upon her." (27:6)
- A life-bearing part sells the whole. Selling "the head" of a servant or a donkey conveys half the value because life depends on it; a part life does not depend on is valued between them, and a cow's head is only a head, since heads of cattle are sold on their own. (27:8)
- Contents follow the vessel, except water. A reservoir is sold without its water, while a garbage dump is sold with its garbage, a beehive with its bees and a dovecote with its doves. (27:10)
RememberMoney is the loudest voice in a market, and the Rambam will not let it testify about what was sold.