English

Noun

land agent ‎(plural land agents)

1. (chiefly Britain) A professional employed to manage an estate; steward or estate manager.
   • 1904, S. M. Hussey, The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent, ISBN 1465562532:

     The duties of an Irish land agent comprise a great deal of office work, drawing up agreements with tenants, receiving rent, superintending agricultural and all landlords' improvements, sitting as magistrate and representing the landlord when the latter is absent at poor-law meetings, road sessions, and on grand juries.

   • 1992, D. R. Hainsworth, Stewards, Lords and People: The Estate Steward and His World in Later Stuart England, ISBN 0521364892, page 251:

     It was a relationship quite different from that of the late-eighteenth-century steward who was evolving into the salaried land agent so characteristic of the nineteenth century.

   • 2010, Douglas Scarrett, Property Asset Management, ISBN 1136884807:

     However a study of the cautious development of land law will also demonstrate the evolution of the modern estate manager's role through that of steward and then land agent, particularly well summarised in F.M.L. Thompson's Chartered Surveyors - The Growth of a Profession.

   • 2011, W. Steuart Trench, Realities of Irish Life, ISBN 1108037054, page 131:

     I can truly say its prevention has been the great difficulty of my life as a land agent. The collection of rent is almost always easy on a well-managed estate ; but the prevention of subdivision is almost always difficult.

2. (historical) A person employed to manage the legal and practical aspects of developing a land grant.
   • 1932, A.M. Sakolski, The great American land bubble, ISBN 1610162986, page 81:

     He held the office as resident land agent of the Holland Land Company for twenty-one years. In this capacity he laid out the city of New Amsterdam, now Buffalo, gave its streets the jaw-breaking names of the Dutch proprietors and made it a flourishing town.

   • 1997, Jeanne Ruth Merifield Beck, To Do and to Endure: The Life of Catherine Donnelly, Sister of Service, ISBN 155002289X:

     As land agent, he had observed the successful German settlement at Muenster, thirty-eight miles north, and the arrival of a French-Canadian group who took up homesteads in 1904 at St. Brieux, in the same area.

   • 1998, An Environmental History of Northeast Florida, ISBN 0813016002, page 141:

     Those grants that were taken up depended primarily upon a land agent and an overseer for their operation. The land agent was the owner's representative in America and was responsible for managing the legal and practical affairs related to obtaining and developing the grant.

3. A real estate broker, especially one who specializes in the buying and selling of farms or undeveloped land.
   • 1886, Copp's Land Owner - Volume 13, page 180:

     The importance of appearing in this Directory is so evident to every land agent and attorney that we will discuss the matter no further.

   • 1919, The Magistrates' Court Reports - Volume 14, page 96:

     If, following such a communication from the land agent, the owner of the property intimates that he is willing to negotiate for the sale thereof, he does not thereby make the land agent in any sense his agent for sale, or for any other purpose.

   • 1960, The New Zealand Law Reports, page 591:

     The circumstances are that the land agent brought the parties together in full discussion before the document was signed, so it must be held that the plaintiff himself accepted and fully approved H.A. Paddison as a purchaser.

   • 1982, Nicholas P. Cushner, Farm and Factory: The Jesuits and the Development of Agrarian Capitalism in Colonial Quito, 1600-1767, ISBN 0873955714, page 48:

     He acted as the land agent for the Jesuits in Chillos in the 1690s, buying up small pieces of property for the expanding estate of the College of Quito.

4. A government official responsible for managing public lands.
   • 1840, Congressional Series of United States Public Documents, Volume 356, page 106-107:

     By these papers you will learn that the Hon. Rufus McIntire, while engaged in the service of this State as land agent, in endeavoring to expel from lands bordering on the Aroostook river, in this State, a body of armed men, principally from the British provinces, who were engaged in cutting the timber, in defiance of the authorities of this State, has been seized, with Gustavus G. Cushman and Thomas Bartlett, Esquires, who were aiding the land agent in this service, and have been transported to Frederickton, the capital of New Brunswick.

   • 1883, ‎Charles William Goddard, Report of Charles W. Goddard, Commissioner to Revise, Collate, Arrange and Consolidate the General and Public Laws of the State of Maine:

     ln townships so selected, in which suitable roads have not been located, the land agent shall cause such roads to be located as the public interest and the accommodation of the future settlement require.

   • 1991, Lois Wille, Forever Open, Clear, and Free: The Struggle for Chicago's Lakefront, ISBN 0226898725:

     He found an old law providing for sale of unused public lands at the rate of $1.25 an acre and costs, and somehow convinced the federal land agent that this entitled him to buy all the fort property.

   • 2012, Kenneth Jones, Two Pilgrims' Journey: The Quest for Jesus, ISBN 1105508374, page 100:

     That is what prompted him to write the county land agent to find what properties were available.

5. (chiefly US) An employee of an oil or mining company who negotiates with landowners for rights to extract oil or minerals from thier property.
   • 1950, John J. Sweeney, Connecticut Law Journal - Volume 17, page 250:

     On January 10, 1951, a land agent of the plaintiff called at the home of the defendants and requested of Mrs. Bancroft permission to enter' upon the land to make a survey for location of a pipe line.

   • 2008, John Bishop Ballem, The Oil and Gas Lease in Canada, ISBN 0802093507, page 10:

     The casual approach to mineral leasing, where each lease was typed up on an individual basis, was no longer appropriate. Efficiency demanded a standardized form and one, moreover, that could be completed by the land agent in the field.

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