A leasehold estate is an ownership of a temporary right to hold land or property in which a lessee or a tenant has rights of real property by some form of title from a lessor or landlord. Although a tenant does hold rights to real property, a leasehold estate is typically considered personal property.

Leasehold is a form of land tenure or property tenure where one party buys the right to occupy land or a building for a given time. As a lease is a legal estate, leasehold estate can be bought and sold on the open market. A leasehold thus differs from a freehold or fee simple where the ownership of a property is purchased outright and after that held for an indeterminate length of time, and also differs from a tenancy where a property is let (rented) periodically such as weekly or monthly.

Terminology and types of leasehold vary from country to country. Sometimes, but not always, a residential tenancy under a lease agreement is colloquially known as renting. The leaseholder can remain in occupation for a fixed period, measured in months or years. Terms of the agreement are contained in a lease, which has elements of contract and property law intertwined.

Laws governing landlord–tenant relationships can be found as far back as the Code of Hammurabi. However, the common law of the landlord-tenant relationship evolved in England during the Middle Ages. That law still retains many archaic terms and principles pertinent to a feudal social order and an agrarian economy, where land was the primary economic asset and ownership of land was the primary source of rank and status.

The tenancy was essential to the feudal hierarchy after the statute Quia Emptores prohibited subinfeudation (the creation of new feudal estates by existing feudal landholders) in the late 13th century; a lord would own land, and the tenants became vassals. Leasehold estates can still be Crown land today. For example, in the Australian Capital Territory, all private land "ownerships" are leaseholds of Crown land.

A distinction may be made between a residential tenancy, offering a person a place to live, and a business tenancy, where premises are occupied for business purposes. There may be different statutory provisions for residential and business tenancies, for example in the UK's Landlord and Tenant Act 1954, Part I (now largely superseded) dealt with residential tenancies and Part II dealt with business tenancies.

A "fixed-term tenancy" or tenancy for years lasts for some fixed period of time. Despite the name, such a tenancy can last for any period of time – even a tenancy for one week would be called a tenancy for years. In common law, the duration did not need to be certain, but could be conditioned upon the happening of some event (e.g. "until the crops are ready for harvest", "until the war is over"). This is now disfavored, and some jurisdictions have made fixed durations a requirement.

The tenancy will end automatically when the fixed term runs out or in the case of a tenancy that ends on the happening of an event when the event occurs. It is also possible for a tenant to give up the tenancy to the landlord, either expressly or implicitly. This process is known as a surrender of the lease. A tenancy may end when and if the tenant accepts a buyout agreement from their landlord. The landlord can offer to repurchase the property from their tenant as long as both parties agree upon the price (as with any other consideration, this need neither be market-rate, nor indeed monetary at all).