What counts as personal property in a home sale? Everything that is not real property: movable things that pass by bill of sale rather than by deed, which is why every purchase contract lists what stays and what goes.
Personal property is everything that is not real property: movable things not permanently attached to the land. Furniture, appliances that plug in, vehicles, tools, the contents of the closets. The older word for it is chattel, and it changes hands by bill of sale or by a title certificate rather than by a recorded deed. The definition is easy and the boundary is not, because the argument in a home sale is almost always about fixtures, items that started as personal property and became part of the real property by being installed. Courts look at three things: the method and permanence of the attachment, whether the item has been adapted to the use of that particular property, and the intention of the person who installed it, which is the test that usually decides the question.
None of that is a good way to run a purchase. The practical rule is that what conveys is what the contract says conveys, so anything either side cares about goes on the paper before it is signed. The reliable arguments are the predictable ones: the mounted television and its bracket, the washer and dryer, the refrigerator, the window coverings, the garage shelving, the patio heater, the above-ground spa, the chandelier the seller inherited. Write each of them in as included or excluded and the question never arises. A seller who plans to take a fixture should exclude it in the listing rather than swapping it out quietly the week before closing, which is the version that ends in an argument at the final walkthrough with escrow waiting.
The line does real work in Nevada in two places. A manufactured home is personal property, titled through the Manufactured Housing Division and billed on the unsecured tax roll, until an affidavit of conversion permanently affixes it to land the owner holds; before that it is bought on a chattel loan and after it can carry an ordinary mortgage. The other place is the insurance policy, where personal property is a named coverage line meaning the owner's or tenant's belongings, separate from dwelling coverage on the structure, and commonly written at a percentage of the dwelling limit rather than at a figure anybody chose. Same two words, different sense: the policy is talking about what is in the house, not about what stays with it.
A worked example
A $480,000 home sells with the refrigerator, the washer and dryer and two mounted televisions written in as included, and the dining room chandelier written in as excluded. Those items are worth maybe $4,000 together, under one percent of the price. At the walkthrough the appliances are there, the chandelier has already been swapped for a plain fixture, and nobody argues, because all four lines were on the contract. The one that goes wrong is the $900 mounted television nobody wrote down: it was bolted to the wall, the buyer assumed it stayed, the seller took it, and three days of escrow delay cost more than the television.
The Nevada purchase agreement, clause by clause
Questions people ask
Do appliances count as personal property?
It depends on how they are installed and, in practice, on what the contract says. A built-in oven or dishwasher is normally treated as a fixture and conveys. A plug-in refrigerator, washer and dryer are personal property and convey only when the contract names them.
What is the difference between a fixture and personal property?
A fixture is personal property that became part of the real property by being attached with the intention that it stay. Attachment, adaptation to the property and intention are the tests. Write the item into the contract and the tests never have to be applied.