Only Athenian citizens had the right to hold real estate. They could exploit it either by cultivating their land in person, or by renting it out to others, thus collecting either part of the gains or, simply, rent. They could also rent out areas to foreign visitors and metics.
Strangers visiting the city were a source of income to the inhabitants. While they were in Athens they would need somewhere to stay and something to eat and drink. They would also be hiring slaves, renting carts, giving traders economic support, and visiting whorehouses. Only the last of these was taxed.

Athenian inhabitants' real estate comprised livestock, chattels, boats, slaves, and specie. Athenian private property was particuarly high after the Persian wars and the emergence of Athens as the prime power among her allies.

But in the aftermath of the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, boom conditions could not go on. If we compare two statistics for the eisphora, in the year 428/7 and the year 378/7, it is obvious how great the loss of Athenian property was during the war. In 428/7 there was the first eisphora after the declaration of war. It realized two hundred talents. Admittedly for Attica at this period we do not know its timema (valuation) - the total value of eisphora-liable Athenian citizens' estates. But it can be calculated on the basis of existing details about the value of the timema in the year 378/7 B.C.
Thus we know that in the fourth century there was a regular tax of the order of 1 per cent on private property, and that tax of the order of 2 per cent was exceptional. When the tax was imposed in 387/6 B.C., Attica's timema amounted to six thousand talents. On the view that the tax's value did not vary in the fifth century, we can calculate the valuation at twenty or ten thousand talents for the year 428/7 B.C. Whatever sum we may choose, what we notice is that there was a drop in Athenian property of the order of 25 or 40 per cent. Of course it must be emphasized that statistics of this sort are based on premisses for which there is no clear detailed information.

But as well as a drop in property there can also be seen to have been a property transfer between members of well-to-do classes. This was due to the civil war of 404/3 B.C. The Thirty Tyrants confiscated the estates of their enemies, selling off some and declaring some to be polis property. When democracy came into the ascendant, unsold confiscated estates were returned to their owners. As for estates that had already been sold, the new owners had the right to hold on to their invisible part. This meant slaves, money, and furniture. But they were obliged to return their visible part - land and dwelling-places.

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